In my opinion, X Plane is where it is now because of these developers, the team at Laminar, and the fantastic collaboration Laminar had with developers in what they wanted in a sim.  All the hard work was done and that paved the way for FSX developers to say "Ok, now there's a market.  Now we'll go over." not knowing what it took to get X-Plane to where it is.

You might need additional hours in your day to meet the new demand for your Citation. :wink:

I, for one, am highly apprehensive of FSX developers coming over to X-Plane, with their DRM, extremely-overpriced products which, albeit good, sometimes really are very, very expensive. For example, The Witcher 3: Game of the Year Edition costs anywhere between US$30 to US$60, depending on whether or not there's a sale on, or any discounts or whatnot. This AAA game gives easily three hundred hours of solid gameplay, including voice acting, highly complicated scripted scenes, not to mention incredible graphics. Yes, understandably it's developed by a studio that's five to ten times as big as flight sim developer studios.

 

However, I feel that pricing a single airport, or photoscenery and buildings that we can generate ourselves, at comparable prices to the AAA game above, is tantamount to daylight robbery.

 

The X-Plane community has always been very open, with freeware and donationware dominating the market. The fact that X-Plane 10.51 looks as good as it is, is due to the tireless efforts of developers like Tony (outstanding work on the W2XP generator), Mister X6, and Pumper (who single-handedly redid the Flightfactor 777 cockpit, and the dev studio itself ended up incorporating some of his work for a subsequent update). This is not to mention countless other users who have developed everything from XSquawkBox to SkyMaxx, and all the tiny fixes and bug reports given to the devs.

 

I appreciate developers who put in plenty of effort to deliver a great product, subsequently support and update it for a reasonable amount of time before deprecating it, all while charging a reasonable amount of money for their products. It sometimes makes little sense to people who exclusively play games and not flight sims, why what are effectively add-on products to the original, more expensive than the base product itself.

From a user standpoint, I found that the base XP sim, combined with outside freeware developers, have created a stable environment that has good quality and positive results.  To bring in more of the "big dogs", will only intimidate the community of hard-working and caring developers.

indeed, but as seen with PMDG, if the top dogs from FSX/P3D come to x-plane they certainly aren't on the top of the food chain by default. The DC-6, while a nice plane, is certainly not the baby ****** ( since when is the gods son censored ) everybody thought it would be.

 

while the businessmodell of orbx is different than that of pmdg (they just can take x-plane scenery developers) the problem is that all your technological edge in FSX/P3D is worthless in x-plane and you need to start from zero.

So true. So, all you new X-Planers, you are very welcome in the community! But please have a closer look at the sim and the people who deliver fantastic addons for it, right now and for years, free- and payware, and support them, by donating and buying their products!

Nice that it's confirmed , we will see some good shots of ORBX in XP now .

 

I think they will design small regions which would be much more easier. using there own mesh and stuff.

 

Hey do remember to make India.

 

As to the pricing they will always charge because new platform new products new customers.

You might need additional hours in your day to meet the new demand for your Citation. :wink:

 

Oh, I pray for that every day.  It's not uncommon for me to be up at 2 or 3am working on it after an 18 hour day.  Sometimes I feel like getting a regular job just to take a rest.

If the XP market gets saturated with freeware and payware developers, that may equate to a good thing for LR, showing them that they did something right.  For the consumer, you vote with your wallets.  Right now, I believe LR is on the right track for producing an out-of-the-box realistic environment, so with that, we can only ask for more content or at the very least, utilize the tools we are given to do it ourselves.  I had a negative personal opinion about the new pricing points for ORBX scenery for P3D and FSX, and if they decide to add XP to their portfolio, what will that do for cost?  I suspect it'll be right up there with everything else.  As it was said earlier, why pay huge costs for payware, when there are a good number of freeware developers (like Scramjet mentioned), that can do a heck of a job and not charge up front for what they distribute.  I honestly appreciate those folks' hard work and commitment.  

Very interesting.

 

 

 

I wonder how they'll do their DRM. It's common for X-Plane aircraft now, but scenery is fully portable so far, even if it comes with an installer.

 

Same way as they do now with FSX/P3D, everything is downloaded and installed through their FTXCentral V3 software.

You log into your ORBX account in FTXCentral and everything is there for you, your purchased addons and their configuration options and also everything in that's available in the ORBX shop, just click and buy.

Not to mention all those hurt egos when X-Plane get's out of it's "underground" status and becomes a mainstream sim. :wink: No more cool kids, just cheerleaders and quarterbacks.

If the XP market gets saturated with freeware and payware developers, that may equate to a good thing for LR, showing them that they did something right.  For the consumer, you vote with your wallets.  Right now, I believe LR is on the right track for producing an out-of-the-box realistic environment, so with that, we can only ask for more content or at the very least, utilize the tools we are given to do it ourselves.  I had a negative personal opinion about the new pricing points for ORBX scenery for P3D and FSX, and if they decide to add XP to their portfolio, what will that do for cost?  I suspect it'll be right up there with everything else.  As it was said earlier, why pay huge costs for payware, when there are a good number of freeware developers (like Scramjet mentioned), that can do a heck of a job and not charge up front for what they distribute.  I honestly appreciate those folks' hard work and commitment.

 

Simmers would buy an addon when it has prooved it self different then, others (freeware, competition...) and i think ORBX know it , so we will see what quality and features ORBX is offering! Unless ORBX want to start sandbox projects like PMDG did! But as said before by someone scenery is easier to port then aircrafts!

 

 

 To bring in more of the "big dogs", will only intimidate the community of hard-working and caring developers.

 

It's sad but true I think. XP as a simulator will become less attractive to me personally if everything starts to become payware like it is on P3D. But it's also good for others who like things like that. 

 

 

 

Not to mention all those hurt egos when X-Plane get's out of it's "underground" status and becomes a mainstream sim. No more cool kids, just cheerleaders and quarterbacks.

 

Doh!, this means I'm now going to have to find another sim nobody uses to become a simmer hipster. See you all in flightgear ;-)

Not to mention all those hurt egos when X-Plane get's out of it's "underground" status and becomes a mainstream sim. :wink: No more cool kids, just cheerleaders and quarterbacks.

Lol! Luckily, I do not define my ego through the flight sim, I spend some of my free time in! ;-)

But XP is so cool because of all the hard work, done by the wonderful community.

And I hope, that will stay the same.

Why will ORBX come over to XP?

Because XP gets more important in the market.

Why is it that?

Because it is an amazing sim!

Why is it an amazing sim?

Because of all that hard working people, putting so much effort and heart into it.

And I fear, that all their work and effort will get swallowed by the big players that come to harvest.

But these are the rules of capitalism, I guess...

 

Over and out... ;-)

 

 

Same way as they do now with FSX/P3D, everything is downloaded and installed through their FTXCentral V3 software.
You log into your ORBX account in FTXCentral and everything is there for you

 

You describe the purchase process, but the scenery downloaded by FTXCentral still has to go into "Custom Scenery" -- and once it is in "Custom Scenery", users have full access to each and every file in it.

 

It's interesting to see how they will prevent this. Maybe a plugin in the scenery folder that decompresses scenery files only if the user data are correct (serial etc.) and otherwise moves the users position to somewhere in the ocean or stops X-Plane loading at all. But once the scenery is loaded and X-Plane running, all files still need to be at a place where X-Plane expects them, and at that point the files are accessable by and can be copied by everyone. They could be moved to a new folder, without the protecting plugin, and then the protection would not work anymore.

 

I'm wondering about that mainly because one of X-Plane's biggest advantages is that it is self-contained. You can move the entire X-Plane folder to a different place, you can create as many copies as you like, and most of it will still work. The more addons we get with DRM, the harder this might get.

 

 

I think they will design small regions which would be much more easier. using there own mesh and stuff.
 
Hey do remember to make India.

 

Looks like just airports to me at the moment, but we'll see. No chance they'll do India, it seems they are sticking to where the money is, ie Europe and NA

I, for one, am highly apprehensive of FSX developers coming over to X-Plane, with their DRM, extremely-overpriced products which, albeit good, sometimes really are very, very expensive. For example, The Witcher 3: Game of the Year Edition costs anywhere between US$30 to US$60, depending on whether or not there's a sale on, or any discounts or whatnot. This AAA game gives easily three hundred hours of solid gameplay, including voice acting, highly complicated scripted scenes, not to mention incredible graphics. Yes, understandably it's developed by a studio that's five to ten times as big as flight sim developer studios.

 

However, I feel that pricing a single airport, or photoscenery and buildings that we can generate ourselves, at comparable prices to the AAA game above, is tantamount to daylight robbery.

 

The X-Plane community has always been very open, with freeware and donationware dominating the market. The fact that X-Plane 10.51 looks as good as it is, is due to the tireless efforts of developers like Tony (outstanding work on the W2XP generator), Mister X6, and Pumper (who single-handedly redid the Flightfactor 777 cockpit, and the dev studio itself ended up incorporating some of his work for a subsequent update). This is not to mention countless other users who have developed everything from XSquawkBox to SkyMaxx, and all the tiny fixes and bug reports given to the devs.

 

I appreciate developers who put in plenty of effort to deliver a great product, subsequently support and update it for a reasonable amount of time before deprecating it, all while charging a reasonable amount of money for their products. It sometimes makes little sense to people who exclusively play games and not flight sims, why what are effectively add-on products to the original, more expensive than the base product itself.

 

the difference is that AAA have bigger audience. no man's sky sold 800k copies at 60$ on steam alone. In the flight sim community, a few thousand copies is sold is considered a huge success. So you need to crank the prices up to make a living. 5000 copies sold at 20$ is a mere 100k for a year or more work.