December 2, 20241 yr Hello, I'm coming back to where with the release of MSFS2024. Does the SDK of this MSFS2024 now allow to make a module like FirefighterX at the time? And if so is it in the projects? Have a nice day.
December 2, 20241 yr Author Commercial Member 43 minutes ago, BSV1191 said: Hello, I'm coming back to where with the release of MSFS2024. Does the SDK of this MSFS2024 now allow to make a module like FirefighterX at the time? And if so is it in the projects? Have a nice day. I guess that creating FPS friendly fires should be doable now. At least judging by the trailer - I haven't actually seen a fire in the sim. For that, one has to go through the career mode - I don't have time for that. Three major issues remain. Firstly, I don't know if it will be possible to place fires programmatically (=if the legacy implementation how we did that still works). Second, we still cannot attach simobjects to other simobjects, like we can in P3D. This means, that helicopters won't have buckets. The maker of the aircraft would have to provide those. That makes the app not as flexible as it should be (for example, I cannot realistically do bucketing with any helicopter that I want - or witch attachments on the fly, from a bucket to a rain maker - or the incendiary fuel drum to fight fire with fire). The last item is the AI aircraft logic in MSFS 2024 - it is "not good". Fighting fires on your own is quite unrealistic, you have to have company. At least a bunch of helicopters and maybe a birddog. But the AI flight model in (both) MSFSs IMHO isn't for fire fighting duty. They fly like offensive word not allowed. I will ask the Lorby parent company in Canada, see what they think of it. But my gut feeling says that FFX24 will be a massive effort again - and I am not sure that past sales warrant that. We'll see. LORBY-SI
December 11, 20241 yr Ok I see complicated indeed. keep us informed of those that Lorby parent company in Canada could say. We are a group of 10 people. We all fly together thanks to Lorby Si Firefighter and it is a treat but we would like to switch to MSFS for the time being. We are ready to finance the project. 😉
December 11, 20241 yr Author Commercial Member 3 hours ago, BSV1191 said: We are ready to finance the project. OK, so let's do the calculation like for a real world software project. Let's say the programming effort is three months, that is about 500 hours. Rule of thumb of software development says, that you have to triple that number to account for specification, config management and testing. Our external hourly rate is €100, so we are talking about €150.000 (yes, one hundred and fifty thousand) in cost for this app. That kind of money can never - ever be recovered through sales. Realistically you can expect 10% of the cost in return., strechted over a period of 5 years (=that is what my experience with the original FFX tells me). I was only able to create FFX 10 years ago because I was doing it as a hobby and didn't have to pay myself (FFX was supposed to be freeware initially - but the effort to make it grew out of hand, and real work should never be free). But - none of that will make the shortcomings of the platform go away. Personally I think that at the moment it is not worth investing any effort into this. Edited December 11, 20241 yr by Lorby_SI LORBY-SI
August 11, 2025Aug 11 Hello Lorby, Do you have news about a project for fire operations for MSFS 2020 and 2024 ? Have a nice day.
August 11, 2025Aug 11 Author Commercial Member 18 minutes ago, BSV1191 said: Hello Lorby, Do you have news about a project for fire operations for MSFS 2020 and 2024 ? Have a nice day. Hello, FireFighter X has been cancelled and removed from the shops. At the moment there are no plans to make a new one for the MSFS platform. The MSFS sims haven't overcome their shortcomings regarding the functionality that FFX would need, and it would still only be a very limited experience compared to the P3D versions. Plus, it is my understanding that there are other apps out there, already doing the same thing - and there are the fire fighting missions in FS24 career mode. Doesn't seem to be worth it investing the effort into a new version, knowing that it won't "fly". Edited August 11, 2025Aug 11 by Lorby_SI LORBY-SI
Create an account or sign in to comment