@JaquesBrel,

I like your new law  

 

Being very much a capitalist, I believe that cash flow will always determine what we get from the development companies.

 

 

P3D going to 64 bit is the best time to look around and see if another sim isn't worth the new investments. 

 

I disagree. It will actually kill off one (or more) of the "smaller" sim options, unless DTG FS is pretty much identical to P3d 64 bit.  BTW, your post will eventually cause this thread to get locked.

 

How come all the P3d threads get locked by the moderators rather than having the offending posts about other sims just deleted?

@JaquesBrel,

I like your new law  

 

Being very much a capitalist, I believe that cash flow will always determine what we get from the development companies.

In this particular case it is more of a trickle really, not a flow. If outfits like RealAir or EarthSimulations are willing to fold just like that, IMHO this should give everyone some indication about the state of this so-called "industry" as a whole.

 

 

IMHO this should give everyone some indication about the state of this so-called "industry" as a whole.

 

It's basically what's called a cottage industry. There's a lot of developers whose products straddle the fence between random freeware and polished professional payware. There's a reason that most developers do not publish their sales figures. The sims themselves sell well but then most of the those copies are treated as typical video games. People play them for a month or two and then never think about them again.

I think that every developer should soon make a statement, now that P3D 64bit is pretty much confirmed. They should let us know if they will make x64 bit compatible products and so support the upcoming P3D x64 version. If so, they should let us know if there will be a free x64 installer for already customers, a fee to pay or a completely new product. Someone who is ready to pay for the -lets say- upcoming  PMDG 747 will completely feel betrayed if a month later a new x64 PMDG 747 is announced sold as a separate product. I think it is ethical to let us know too.

My personal belief is that it should be for free or at least for a very small fee. Every software product that I know that is released on both 32/64 versions offer both download files for x32/x64 under the same price. 

 

So I don't think we should worry for losing compatibility. Sooner or later our x32 add-ons will be transformed to work on the x64 version. Until then I'll keep having a better sim on x32 P3D. For me a vanilla x64 P3D has no point without the currently add-ons, thus no point to upgrade without them.

I for one have bought my very last 32 bit addon. I'm not investing more in a platform soon to be abandoned by the developer. The past few years have shown us the third party developers that are willing to invest in new versions of P3D and who aren't. And I've also taken note who have been pretty lazy providing new installers as things have progressed...

Since I don't and have never had issues with OOMs, for me to move from a 32 bit to 64 bit version , there will have to be some major improvements or added features in the 64 bit version besides just OMM elimination. 

Given that this would be a great time start fresh, I'm really hoping that the next version of P3D will at least bake the capability to do the following (allowing these to be enabled / utilized down the road perhaps...):

 

- Break from the existing vector and ground texturing solution and use something that doesn't have roads running over textures / through buildings

- DX12 support for hardware abstraction,asynchronicity, etc (the features are almost tailored for use in a flight sim...performance gains would be phenomenal if implemented well)

- A new autogen system that moves fully towards instancing (reducing overhead, improving autogen detail and increasing performance)

- A new lighting system for "volumetric" lighting / illumination

 

This might as well be revolutionary than evolutionary :smile:

 

 

Sure this happens, for hardware platforms which would otherwise be unusable. But in that case the 3rd party development often is part of the plan and synched to the main stream. Sadly, this is not the case in the world of flightsims or any other platform that can stand on it's own, where the addons are just that - improvements of the original program.

 

This happens all the time in the software world - in past jobs I was regularly part of a beta program with major vendors who were launching new versions of their software or service platforms. If you're adding significant new functionality, you want on Day 1 to have partners leveraging this new functionality and demonstrating to customers why they need to upgrade.

 

Cheers!

This happens all the time in the software world - in past jobs I was regularly part of a beta program with major vendors who were launching new versions of their software or service platforms. If you're adding significant new functionality, you want on Day 1 to have partners leveraging this new functionality and demonstrating to customers why they need to upgrade.

 

Cheers!

Good for you, it never happened to me (in 35 years). I guess the keywords here are "major" and "significant", as these apply to the addons too. If that is the case for flightsim addons is probably a matter of debate. I shouldn't have made my statement so broad, my mistake.

 

About "developers should let us know" - spoken for myself - I can't. I have no idea whatsoever about what is to come. If enough changes happen, I would have to redevelop my addons from scratch (they are all programmatic in nature). The market as a whole and the P3D niche especially are way to tiny to warrant that kind of effort (especially if it is supposed to be a free update). In 2 years with a developer account at LM's, I have never received any notice about project plan or roadmap (or any other information for that matter). Once the platform is released and/or specs are available, a decision will be made.

 

 

How come all the P3d threads get locked by the moderators rather than having the offending posts about other sims just deleted?

 

Good point. Let's see if we can stay on topic. It would appear that a 64bit P3D is becoming more of a reality and this discussion has some good points.

 

Let's keep it civil so we all win.

 

Vic

Given that this would be a great time start fresh, I'm really hoping that the next version of P3D will at least bake the capability to do the following (allowing these to be enabled / utilized down the road perhaps...):

 

- Break from the existing vector and ground texturing solution and use something that doesn't have roads running over textures / through buildings

- DX12 support for hardware abstraction,asynchronicity, etc (the features are almost tailored for use in a flight sim...performance gains would be phenomenal if implemented well)

- A new autogen system that moves fully towards instancing (reducing overhead, improving autogen detail and increasing performance)

- A new lighting system for "volumetric" lighting / illumination

 

This might as well be revolutionary than evolutionary :smile:

That isn't revolutionary, that's a totally new sim. And so that won't happen. If LM wanted those things they wouldn't have used the FSX engine. V4 will be an update of v3: you can't expect anything else. Still, LM may have some surprises up their sleeves. The cloud shadows came as a big surprise too and that was with a regular update, not even a new version! No one (well, maybe one or two) really knows what they have in store. The did announce more news at the start of 2017 so... stay tuned.

 

 

now that P3D 64bit is pretty much confirmed. T

 

Anyone has a link to this?

Anyone has a link to this?

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/127182-orbx-2017-roadmap/?page=1

 

Project P

 

Kind regards, Michael

And the info about the hotfix on the LM site ends with: "Thanks again for your support and we will see you all in 2017 with some major news!" Ok, nothing about 64 bit but most people think there is nothing else that could be called major. Add to this Orbx's announcement and there you go.