Update From the Dovetail Games Flight Team

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

Wow too many people put too much emphasis on 64bit.

 

"P3d will turn the whole market upside-down"

 

Highly unlikely - you'll get the capability to run more detailed scenery with more stability - I don't think thats been P3D's biggest weakness so I very much doubt it will change anybody who hasn't purchased P3D already.

 

Dovetail I hope will offer something new and fresh. I think they need too as another Flight School ok looking but limited simulator will look out of place amongst the more established feature rich and graphically superier P3D and X-Plane 11 which they'll be in direct comparison whether DTG like it or not.

 

It's certainly too early to say Dovetail are a passing cloud and I can't help but feel you're basing this on a $10 dollar Flight School title when if you actually look at there games in development they are pretty impressive.

Basically, at the moment P3d is  stuck firmly in the past. Users will eventually abandon it because it is a legacy 32 bit app with the associated poor memory management. To be honest, other then fooling around with VOXATC 7 beta and the recent live ATC addon, I havn't used P3d in months in deference to XP11. I have a recent PC with an i7-6700k CPU and GTX 1080 video card. I didn't buy all that hardware just to run P3d with a half-used collection of payware aircraft and scenery at less than 4K resolution, with decent IQ settings. I haven't flown the Triple 7 or the NGX in at least 6 months because of OOM issues.

 

That said, you may have misinterpreted my comments. A 64 bit P3d adds a 3rd viable flight sim to the mix (Aerofly FS 2 and XP11 are the others) and if it ever happens, it will cause further disruption in the already fragmented flight sim market. Anyone that believes otherwise is either naive or has been asleep for a few years. I can't even consider FSX as an option, as it is more archaic than P3d. And as to the DTG FS, I called it a passing cloud because the product is a shape shifter. Eventually, it may well be released, but in the meantime it is no more of an option than paying for a flight to Los Angeles on a unicorn.

[rototom 198]

I own X-plane, AeroFly FS2, and I also fly DCS now and then. FSX still gets some use but I won't be buying anything new for it. As far as I'm concerned if it's not 64bit, it's not worth a dime. I'm also not concerned with having to choose one platform. I'll use 2 or 3 if I have to as long as they work well and the addons are good.

[scotchegg 4,186]

I'm wondering if, given advancements in the XP, DCS, Aerofly engines and their achievements with Unreal 4 in the trainsim, DTG think they got a good deal when they bought the ESP code.

[rototom 198]

 

 

Wow too many people put too much emphasis on 64bit.

 

One of the biggest problems with P3D and FSX, and the reason you see thread after thread of OOM / VAS discussions on forums is because of the memory bottleneck. It's no longer feasible to run all the addons that most people have for FSX or P3D without some issue. When everyone is monitoring VAS usage and enabling / disabling addons to make things work; I think it becomes easy to see that we have a problem and that's not the type of thing we should have to deal with in 2017. I suspect there is no other game or simulator on the market today that requires users to tweak and manage so closely.

[bonchie 2,305]

I said it years ago, and in fact wrote letters to many aviation sources too, complaining about it being an ill advised choice when they took stall and spin training off the JAR PPL syllabus and replaced it with 'stall avoidance'. I knew it was a big mistake. IFR ratings are one thing, but they should shove a copy of Wolfgang Langewiesche's Stick and Rudder in your hand when you get a job at an airline and tell you there'll be a test on Monday lol. I'm sure many real-world Airbus pilots will be using FSL's A320 to brush up on things, but it's worrying to think one or two of them might better spend that time on Dovetail's Flight School.

 

I know it's easy to be a 'Monday morning quarterback' when you read NTSB, BEA, and AAIB etc reports in the comfort of an armchair, but sometimes it is staggering how bad some decisions are from highly rated, high hours pilots who you'd like to think would have done a bit better under the circumstances.

 

There's vastly different training philosophies at play all over the world.

 

In the US you get your initial ratings on your own and then spend the next 1500 or so hours flying/instructing in small pistons because of ATP minimums. You maybe get right seat in a regional after that but you aren't touching a Boeing and Airbus without at least 3500 hours unless you are military, usually much more. At the end of it, a pilot has got at least 1500 hours of very basic stick and rudder flying under his belt before he even sees a real capable autopilot or FMC.

 

In Europe, pilot mills are the game (probably because of the lack of GA there due to regulations/cost). A kid goes in with zero time, comes out with a few hundred hours and an A320 type rating, and he's applying for FO positions. He's done the very minimum amount of flying required in basic airplanes, can probably still count the number of stalls he's done, and he's off to button pushing and autopilots doing 99% of the work if he gets hired.

 

That doesn't mean that flying in Europe is unsafe. It's not. Automation works 99.999999999% of the time, so whether the differences in training, hours required, or focus on certain skills actually matters isn't put to the test often enough to know. But in the case of AF447, their number came up and they weren't prepared.

 

Asia is by far the worst though. Their safety record is scary bad compared to the US/Europe. Many of those pilots come from countries where they send pilots to the US for initial ratings and they go back with a CPL/ME/IR. What they do after that, I'm not even sure. Type rating and a cockpit most likely.

Just watched a documentary on that a few months ago, cant believe they never figured it out. Kinda like the C-5 that crashed several years back when the pilots said they didnt have any power. Not one of the three pilots noticed that 3 of the 4 power levers were on idle???

 

My first instructor told me that story several times. He test flew C-17s at Edwards in the 80s and used that story as an example of making sure someone is always flying the airplane. It's not so much that no one noticed as no one thought to look. They all thought the other was doing it.

[DTG Martin 213]

On 02/02/2017 at 6:51 PM, bonchie said:

The fact remains that DTG promised information by now and has since delayed. That would make anyone wonder exactly what is going on. I don't think they gain anything by not addressing the delays in greater detail and it can only hurt them.

There is no big secret behind the delay. We just wanted to spend more time working on the new sim. 

 

- Martin 

[DTG Martin 213]

On 16/02/2017 at 3:11 AM, rototom said:

One of the biggest problems with P3D and FSX, and the reason you see thread after thread of OOM / VAS discussions on forums is because of the memory bottleneck. It's no longer feasible to run all the addons that most people have for FSX or P3D without some issue. When everyone is monitoring VAS usage and enabling / disabling addons to make things work; I think it becomes easy to see that we have a problem and that's not the type of thing we should have to deal with in 2017. I suspect there is no other game or simulator on the market today that requires users to tweak and manage so closely.

Absolutely Jim. This is why we want to make such things a distant memory with our new sim. Less time fiddling, more time flying is our goal. 

- Martin 

[magnetite 38]

On 2/15/2017 at 8:11 PM, rototom said:

One of the biggest problems with P3D and FSX, and the reason you see thread after thread of OOM / VAS discussions on forums is because of the memory bottleneck. It's no longer feasible to run all the addons that most people have for FSX or P3D without some issue. When everyone is monitoring VAS usage and enabling / disabling addons to make things work; I think it becomes easy to see that we have a problem and that's not the type of thing we should have to deal with in 2017. I suspect there is no other game or simulator on the market today that requires users to tweak and manage so closely.

My base sim, FSX, runs quite well in regards to memory management. It's only when you start piling tons of heavy hitting addons do you see the VAS go really high. I don't have too many addons, and never encountered any VAS issues.

Should DTG be expected to design the sim around what an addon developer might implement? Most software that I know of is only guarranteed to work "as is" by itself. Any third party addons aren't guaranteed by them. 

[HiFlyer 9,359]

One way to handle this might be via the oft-dreaded "walled garden" approach, where addons have to be certified to be allowed into the store, which is of course, run by a central authority.

As this is a change from "How it's always been done" I would expect many simmers to react to the idea with horror, but it might just be a viable way to bring a bit of needed order to the addon wild wild west situation that currently exists.

[Alphafoxsierra 166]

Hello everyone!

My name is Aimee Sanjari and I am the Brand Manager for flight simulation here at Dovetail Games. As Martin has already started his new role, I will be keeping an eye on the DTG threads here until our new CM starts. 

While I can't check in on a daily basis, I will try my best to make sure you guys don't feel neglected 

-Aimee

[Ted Striker 338]

Hello Aimee,

Just one easy question as I am sure you cannot answer all the questions we really want to ask.

Are you and others on your team planning on attending the Flightsim conference in Connecticut again this June?

Ted   

[Alphafoxsierra 166]

24 minutes ago, Ted Striker said:

Hello Aimee,

Just one easy question as I am sure you cannot answer all the questions we really want to ask.

Are you and others on your team planning on attending the Flightsim conference in Connecticut again this June?

Ted   

Hi Ted,

We wouldn't miss it - It's one of my favorite times of year! We will also be exhibiting there for the first time, which is equally exciting. Will you be there too?

Aimee

[BaronKen 144]

2 hours ago, DTG_Aimee said:

As Martin has already started his new role, I will be keeping an eye on the DTG threads here until our new CM starts. 

While I can't check in on a daily basis, I will try my best to make sure you guys don't feel neglected 

-Aimee

Welcome Aimee, we are looking forward to real news about DFS soon. 

[Ted Striker 338]

10 minutes ago, DTG_Aimee said:

Will you be there too?

Aimee

I will be. Glad to hear the DTG team will be there and look forward to talking to all of you again.

Ted

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

I just want to tell you good luck, we're all counting on you...