Aimee and Cryss I hope your're watching

[Alphafoxsierra 166]

8 minutes ago, fsxkitty said:

Can we expect some news in the next 60 days?

I'm loathe to start specifying dates as that has gotten us in trouble before, but I hope so!

[fsxkitty 62]

1 minute ago, DTG_Aimee said:

I'm loathe to start specifying dates as that has gotten us in trouble before!

That's understandable.

On a completely different note, did you do some of the voice-overs on Flight School, Aimee? I thought the voice of one of the air traffic controllers in the lessons sounded like you.

[Alphafoxsierra 166]

14 minutes ago, fsxkitty said:

That's understandable.

On a completely different note, did you do some of the voice-overs on Flight School, Aimee? I thought the voice of one of the air traffic controllers in the lessons sounded like you.

I sure did! 

[pracines 823]

2 hours ago, DTG_Aimee said:

@pracines Thank you for the callout. If we had realized you were able to speak for our entire customer base, we would have come to you sooner!  

All joking aside, we did find out there was an appetite for an entry level flight sim. Additionally, we are finding out more and more about the wide spectrum of how people play via FSX: Steam Edition. There is no one size fits all solution, which is why the sandbox element of FSX worked so well. This is definitely something we recognize and are incorporating into future plans.

I went to DTG years ago with a warning about how Microsoft messed up trying to make flight sim a game for beginners. DTG laughed at me then, but now who is laughing. I do not enjoy laughing at DTG, I would have preferred DTG to succeed. This is why I wrote this post, with facts and proof. If you do not want me to care about the success of DTG flight ??? that is your choice.  

Actually the joke is on DTG, or is Flight School not dead. DTG listened to the fake appetites for an entry level sim, and where are all them appetites? They vomited Flight School off their HD's.

The one size that fits all and the main thing DTG needs to recognize is called realism. The sandbox element is in Flight School, Aerofly2, and Ready for Takeoff as well, what is so difficult to understand here? The sandbox thing is what FS1 was and it has had sandbox ever since, FSX was not the pioneer of sandbox in a flight sim. New versions came out with greater realism, and that is what brought home based flight sims to success. The proof is in the failure of MS Flight (sandbox too). So easy to see, why would DTG deliberately blind themselves? Sandbox is required by flight simmers, but it is not the key element because its like so 2nd nature, its always been there.

So sandbox is currently not or is limited in the new flight sim? "future plans", sounds familiar and costly to flight simmers just to get the basics; no wonder I mentioned AeroFly2 and its future promises that do not matter to the flight sim community.

...hum I sense another failed attempt, oh well I tried.    

[Alphafoxsierra 166]

@pracines

When Microsoft developed Flight Simulator, they didn't just make it for a select few. They took everyone into account, regardless of skill level. That is the path we intend to take as well. Flight School got people who never would have tried a flight sim into the cockpit, therefore it achieved its goal. If if had been a failure, we wouldn't be integrating the content from it into our new simulator. 

Also, I'm not sure where you get "costly" from "future plans". That sounds like a massive assumption to me. 

[G-RFRY 1,708]

2 hours ago, DTG_Aimee said:

@pracines

When Microsoft developed Flight Simulator, they didn't just make it for a select few. They took everyone into account, regardless of skill level. That is the path we intend to take as well. Flight School got people who never would have tried a flight sim into the cockpit, therefore it achieved its goal. If if had been a failure, we wouldn't be integrating the content from it into our new simulator. 

Also, I'm not sure where you get "costly" from "future plans". That sounds like a massive assumption to me. 

I agree it should be simple job making a flight simulator it only took Microsoft 20 years to get to FSX with a dedicated team of developers backed buy one of the richest companies in the world.

 

Ray Fry.  

[Paraffin 2,197]

I'm just going to toss this out here, as a reminder that there actually is a "casual "market out there.

I think most people would consider X-Plane a serious flight sim, aimed at the hardcore user. Or rather, it's something like a personal flight sim developed by an aviation geek CEO who flies in real life, and drives development based on what he's interested in, which puts a fairly "hardcore" tilt on things.

Regardless of that orientation, Laminar has been compiling user data for years through internal data links to the program. Look at these statistics for X-Plane 10 reported in January of this year (version 11 was still in beta, so I'm not including that data):

Primary Flight Controls Type:

Yoke - 25%
Joystick - 23%
Unknown - 18%
Mouse - 31%
Gamepad - 3%

So 31% of X-Plane users are flying with a mouse! Think about that. I suspect most of those users are people who buy the program and don't stick with it for long, but a sale is a sale.

Here's another statistic -- 38% of all flights in XP10 were being flown with the default aircraft provided in the sim, not add-ons!

That's astounding, considering that the default XP10 aircraft weren't that great (XP11 raised the bar considerably with the new default fleet). I don't know if similar statistics are available for FSX through internal reporting, but DTG may have access to that via the Steam version. It wouldn't surprise me if the statistcs for all FSX users -- not just the Avsim community -- were in the same ballpark.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that DTG should make a casual or beginner-oriented flight sim. Like probably everyone else on Avsim, I'm hoping that whatever they're doing lives up to the "next generation flight sim" phrase they used in earlier promotions. But it might make commercial sense to start small, with a sim that looks fairly basic on the surface, with a limited hanger of planes to fly, but with the deep foundation to grow into something larger for the hardcore community. I'm keeping my expectations tamped down to something along those lines.

[pracines 823]

2 hours ago, DTG_Aimee said:

@pracines

When Microsoft developed Flight Simulator, they didn't just make it for a select few. They took everyone into account, regardless of skill level. That is the path we intend to take as well. Flight School got people who never would have tried a flight sim into the cockpit, therefore it achieved its goal. If if had been a failure, we wouldn't be integrating the content from it into our new simulator. 

Also, I'm not sure where you get "costly" from "future plans". That sounds like a massive assumption to me. 

Aimee, you and others missed it once again. You are generalizing "flight simulator", the point of my post is to specify success/failure over various versions. Yes FSX was a success, but MS Flight was not a success.

You can hide under the " Flight School did what we set it out to do" blanket all you want. If it were so successful, are you saying that there will never be the possibility of a next generation of flight simmers out there? What about the people being born today, they will not have Flight School to try flight simming out with will they??? You see how, DTG canceling the project, that is an admission that it was NOT a success, unless DTG makes the assumption that nobody will ever want to try flight simming again. Where is Flight School for the next generations of flight simmers since it was so effective? 

You cannot get the "costly" from "future plans" point that I make because its part of a plan that you've been indoctrinated with; make a base product as basic as it can be, then charge a moderate price for every little thing. The problem with this plan is that FSX had much more than your flight sim will, MS Train sim 2 was going to have the whole world, but some marketing professor(s) came up with the plan DTG intends on. TSW is another example, 1 basic foundation and now we'll see how many routes get provided for the same or possibly more money. So what used to be a good value back when the whole world was provided, has turned into only Hawaii or Just 1 route or Just 2 planes. You can think that this plan of DTG's will be effective or even work, but it will have to compete with history and fairness.  I have no objection to add-ons, but to deliberately require add-ons just to be able to have the basics of what we have had for decades is where objection becomes a very powerful tool to shut companies down easy- just ask ACES.

[Chock 17,769]

17 hours ago, pracines said:

I hope DTG learned a harsh lesson....

Don't even know where to start with this one, but saying you hope their efforts with Flight School were a flop which taught them a harsh lesson, was certainly not a good place to start your own comments if you are trying to appear constructive, because it reads more like a list of personal ransom demands than constructive criticism, and demonstrates that you missed the point of Flight School, which was a similar point to why PMDG had a stab at their DC-6, I.e. to test the 64 bit waters. You will never hear DTG say it, but Flight School was a demo, which is why it was inexpensive and limited in scenery, and that should be obvious to everyone who didn't 'get that' now, since DTG are offering a special bonus to anyone who purchased Flight School who then also buys their new flight sim.

Anyone who says they were disappointed with Flight School must be so mind numbingly unaware of what it's purpose was to almost beggar belief. Especially when one considers that the most popular flight sim platform right now, is DTG's FSX-SE. So they will be well aware that all they have to do is make a 64 bit version of that, and they've cracked it; they can leave all the fancy weather, planes and ATC and flight planning utilities to others and sit back to enjoy the licensing royalties.

So I dunno how people are saying they aren't up to it. Nobody could screw that up.

And people can bang on about P3D going 64 bit as much as they like, but everyone knows most people on Avsim who are using it now, are doing so in breach of the EULA and will still be doing so regardless of its bit depth.

[Paraffin 2,197]

39 minutes ago, pracines said:

You can hide under the " Flight School did what we set it out to do" blanket all you want. If it were so successful, are you saying that there will never be the possibility of a next generation of flight simmers out there? What about the people being born today, they will not have Flight School to try flight simming out with will they??? You see how, DTG canceling the project, that is an admission that it was NOT a success, unless DTG makes the assumption that nobody will ever want to try flight simming again. Where is Flight School for the next generations of flight simmers since it was so effective? 

You may be missing a possible motive for the cancellation of Flight School.

DTG made an investment in the mission designs and progression of flight certificates for Flight School. With all that work already done, it would make perfect sense to roll that into the new DTG Flight Sim as an added feature. And if they're doing that, then they wouldn't want one of their own products competing directly with the new sim. 

Just a wild guess here, but that's all we can do until we know more. Over 1,000 posts in this forum and zero hard information about what we're talking about. I'll bet DTG wished they had waited a while to open these forums. 

[HiFlyer 9,343]

1 hour ago, Paraffin said:

I'll bet DTG wished they had waited a while to open these forums. 

Nah, we would likely have just speculated, anyway.

It also allows them to insert their spin on the subject, which I think did a lot to help keep Flight School from being savaged out of hand, like Flight was.

Now if they had just supported Flight School more robustly and fixed its most obvious flaws like the colors and clouds (just sayin') a lot of people who soured, would probably be a bit less skeptical at this point.

[Guest]

I always chuckle when people who prefer P3D bring up phrases like "you compete against Lockheed Martin", "you really want to go head to head with Lockheed Martin" like P3D was the only reason for their 47 billion $ revenue and as if their CEO would receive daily briefings about the progress to 64bit. 

And to OP: Checking steam stats really does not tell a lot. Ready for takeoff is probably aimed at non-steam gamers and is being distributed and marketed outside of steam. According to Aerosoft, box sales actually matter to them, at least in Germany (and if you walk though a "Media Markt", you can clearly tell they're right). XP11 is like 3 weeks old and costs a lot more than FSX (that has gone on sale quite frequently), so you clearly cannot compare the two. And as you said yourself: It is being sold outside of steam as well. And Aerofly is actually doing okay, I guess. But if you know so well what makes a sim succeed, you should try applying as project manager at Aerosoft or DTG. They'd all love to know how to produce the perfect sim for beginners, amateurs and enthusiasts in a reasonable timeframe and without braking the bank.

[pracines 823]

43 minutes ago, Chock said:

Don't even know where to start with this one, but saying you hope their efforts with Flight School were a flop which taught them a harsh lesson, was certainly not a good place to start your own comments if you are trying to appear constructive, because it reads more like a list of personal ransom demands than constructive criticism, and demonstrates that you missed the point of Flight School, which was a similar point to why PMDG had a stab at their DC-6, I.e. to test the 64 bit waters. You will never hear DTG say it, but Flight School was a demo, which is why it was inexpensive and limited in scenery, and that should be obvious to everyone who didn't 'get that' now, since DTG are offering a special bonus to anyone who purchased Flight School who then also buys their new flight sim.

Anyone who says they were disappointed with Flight School must be so mind numbingly unaware of what it's purpose was to almost beggar belief. Especially when one considers that the most popular flight sim platform right now, is DTG's FSX-SE. So they will be well aware that all they have to do is make a 64 bit version of that, and they've cracked it; they can leave all the fancy weather, planes and ATC and flight planning utilities to others and sit back to enjoy the licensing royalties.

So I dunno how people are saying they aren't up to it. Nobody could screw that up.

And people can bang on about P3D going 64 bit as much as they like, but everyone knows most people on Avsim who are using it now, are doing so in breach of the EULA and will still be doing so regardless of its bit depth.

Thank you for your input Chock, 

Harsh lessons are a very good way to learn from errors and foolishness. If you can understand this take on a beginning of knowledge/learning, then you will begin to understand every thing I wrote as a whole, not just 1 sentence. Kids that do not trust their parents that fire is dangerous, get burnt and sometimes die; a harsh lesson that cannot be argued with or angry about, just a fact. The same is true with DTG and Flight School, they got burnt, end of story. Constructive comments come in many different forms, not just praise and nice things. Honesty is the best method no matter how harsh it has to be.

If Flight School was a "demo" , then again honesty is called for, because deception will come back to haunt every time. A "demo" is free in the ethical business world so then the implication of fraudulent or at least unethical practices are being suggested with this theory. I don't agree, it may be labeled an experiment, but not a demo. I will not suggest that DTG has been fraudulent, just making terrible mistakes that are preventable. Giving constructive (but intentionally harsh) facts in hope of what we all want, a masterpiece that we all can support and enjoy.   

Moving on, I don't say they are not up to the task, the potential is there, but I do question the method that we have been getting hints about. I understand DTG does not have to listen to me, and I don't claim full knowledge of all things in flight simulation. I simply implore DTG to remember all the failures in the past (plain as they are) and not make that same mistake again. From the responses I have received from Aimee, I have little confidence that this new flight sim will succeed. There seems to be a fight from DTG that is against a complete and realistic base flight sim, rather than agreement. This is what I was trying to expose for me to see, because so little is being said. I succeeded in my quest and it was easy. I hoped for another outcome in this topic, but I was not expecting any agreement from DTG. 

Concerning P3D or any product, I never have breached any EULA, so please specify who your talking to or about. Quoting me, in reply to me, talking about EULAs as if I breached any EULA was an error on your part,  please respond directly to whoever you think is doing this. Thank you. 

Take good care Chock :-)

[pracines 823]

17 hours ago, Murmur said:

LOL! The old, evergreen attitude that if you can start the engine with a single keypress, it's not a "serious" flight simulator... Ridiculous...

ROFL!!!.... You did not understand. I have no attitude, and my evergreen forest is lush with understanding. :-) 

Let me help you understand. A2A has an auto-start and an auto-shutdown option for the C182. A very excellent and realistic aircraft produced for us to enjoy. To have that auto-start available is not a sin in my evergreen forest, because there are times when I'm testing a new add-on or an update to my GTN 750, and that auto start is a convenience that I welcome in those cases. There is nothing wrong with Ctrl-E, but there is something wrong when Ctrl-E or auto-start is the only way to start a plane. Realism suddenly disappears and realism is no longer an option. The result is a cancelled/killed/worthless project.

Kids that have access to PC's today are exceptional at learning and figuring out complicated programs/games. The simple games/programs bore them quickly. Civil home based flight simulation is essentially boring even if it is realistic. One has to love aviation to continue on. But the competition is fierce, the GTA V's available today blow flight sims away easy. So appealing to people who want a flight sim to be easy cannot and will not succeed (show me one that has please), they have much more interesting things available to them. This is why I display the stats, they prove this. Check the over 7 million GTA V owners and compare that to all flight sims combined in the last 30 years. A harsh reality that did not need to be. If MS would have made FS9 64-bit, our flight sims today would blow any game away, because the add-on developers we have are super genius status, yet totally hindered by a foolish error called backwards compatibility; that was plain stupid. The threat of OOM's have been the curse on add-on developers and flight simmers for that ignorance.       

And since you did not know, I was referring to the latest attempt to appeal to "beginners", Ready for Takeoff. The "I" key (or key combo of choice) is the only way to start the engines. Another wasted development effort, and I bring this fact plainly to DTG in hope that they understand. A book can be written, but I tried to make a few, simple to understand points, with facts that should be known by a flight sim developer. 

I hope to have helped you with your lack of knowledge/understanding of what I communicated. If you need further assistance dial 411 ...LOL!!      

[pracines 823]

1 hour ago, Paraffin said:

You may be missing a possible motive for the cancellation of Flight School.

DTG made an investment in the mission designs and progression of flight certificates for Flight School. With all that work already done, it would make perfect sense to roll that into the new DTG Flight Sim as an added feature. And if they're doing that, then they wouldn't want one of their own products competing directly with the new sim. 

Just a wild guess here, but that's all we can do until we know more. Over 1,000 posts in this forum and zero hard information about what we're talking about. I'll bet DTG wished they had waited a while to open these forums. 

Paraffin,

You make an excellent point about motive, because I too put a strong emphasis on motive. I truly do forgive mistakes quickly when motives are good, and I self check (and double check with other people) my own motives very often.

In this case, DTG made their motive clear and Aimee has confirmed it.

A company the size of DTG does not develop a flight simulator in order to cancel it a few months later because they have plans to make another flight simulator, that is deliberate waste. From the beginning they said Flight School would be for beginners and the flight sim would be for veterans and the "brave" (lol). We cannot, now that reality has set in, make up stories about a motive that did not exist until the project failed. If flight school had over a million owners and sales were in the thousands daily there is no way it would be cancelled, or does anybody say DTG is that stupid?, I know they are smarter than that, but they are still making mistakes that need not be made.

Yes it is up to them to do what they want, but am I not allowed to care about them and our hobby? I can see writing on the wall and I share that writing in hope that failure can be prevented.