Introducing Flight Sim World!

[cleonpack93 79]

1 minute ago, Azoresst said:

That's exactly why PMDG declined to offer their products for FSX: Steam, since Dovetail required to made them available on Steam.

I have FSX:Steam and I use PMDG products on there. Even if it isn't available on the Steam store many add-ons will still work with steam programs.

[Azoresst 13]

4 minutes ago, cleonpack93 said:

I have FSX:Steam and I use PMDG products on there. Even if it isn't available on the Steam store many add-ons will still work with steam programs.

But that wouldn't be the case for FSW since it's a 64bit Sim and PMDG needs to port their products. According to Dovetail it's necessary to made 3 party products available through Steam (besides other stores) and PMDG doesn't seems to want to make that happen.

Please see this:

 

[n4gix 4,947]

9 minutes ago, cleonpack93 said:

For those wondering about PMDG products

I'd already read it, but thanks for posting again. Every developer will have to weigh the pros and cons of how and where they market their products. As far as I'm concerned as a developer, I'd figure no sales at all as a classic "Bad Idea..."

[n4gix 4,947]

4 minutes ago, Azoresst said:

But that wouldn't be the case for FSW since it's a 64bit Sim and PMDG needs to port their products. According to Dovetail it's necessary to made 3 party products available through Steam (besides other stores) and PMDG doesn't seems to want to make that happen.

They are going to be doing the 64bit port for P3Dv4 anyway, so that's not really much of a reason...

[Azoresst 13]

1 minute ago, n4gix said:

They are going to be doing the 64bit port for P3Dv4 anyway, so that's not really much of a reason...

But still, the SDK may vary and If PMDG decides not to release their products on Steam for FSW, they would go against the EULA.

[arsenal82 120]

8 minutes ago, Azoresst said:

But still, the SDK may vary and If PMDG decides not to release their products on Steam for FSW, they would go against the EULA.

nobody can stop Pmdg porting their products to P3D4   64 bit - steam or not - it has nothing to do with Dtg.

[Azoresst 13]

Just now, arsenal82 said:

nobody can stop Pmdg porting their products to P3D4   64 bit - steam or not - it has nothing to do with Dtg.

And when did I say that? We're talking about FSW, as far as I know...

[arsenal82 120]

Just now, Azoresst said:

And when did I say that? We're talking about FSW, as far as I know...

that is a different matter

sorry misunderstood you

[Azoresst 13]

Just now, arsenal82 said:

that is a different matter

sorry misunderstood you

No problem :)

[Paraffin 2,197]

The relevant statement in the PMDG post is this one, I think:

Quote

"If the market will require participation through a market controlled channel such as steam, the likelihood of our support diminishes rather significantly depending upon the costs of doing business through that channel."

So it may be a question of what kind of deal they can cut, i.e. how much they lose per sale going through Steam. Although there are compensating advantages with Steam, as I mentioned elsewhere.

Another interesting wrinkle is that Steam has a policy of full refunds with no questions asked, if you buy something and it doesn't run, or you just don't like it, before 2 hours have elapsed. I don't think game developers can opt out of that, so presumably this would apply to DTG and all their official/licensed 3rd party DLC like anything from PMDG. That might factor into their decision too.

From the consumer side, that 2 hour demo/refund policy is a good way to find out if your hardware can run the more resource-intensive programs. And possibly an incentive for developers not to release things that are too bug-filled (not that this stops a LOT of AAA-grade games from being released that way on Steam!).

[Azoresst 13]

@Paraffin If I'm not mistaken Steam takes at least 30% of which sale.

Edit: http://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/topic/110849-aerosoft-a330-preview/&page=153#comment-802354

[Longranger 148]

55 minutes ago, n4gix said:

They are going to be doing the 64bit port for P3Dv4 anyway, so that's not really much of a reason...

Stop. You shouldn´t expect that a 64 Bit port to P3D v4 and FSW are the same. They have different SDKs and you have to adapt your product to these SDKs, not to an "64 Bit version". These are different products.

[n4gix 4,947]

19 minutes ago, Longranger said:

Stop. You shouldn´t expect that a 64 Bit port to P3D v4 and FSW are the same.

How ironic that you suggest that a developer doesn't know his business. Karsten, I've been developing for FS for just a bit over twenty-five years. The only aspect of FS that I honestly am not at all proficient in are the arcane mysteries of the FDE. Fortunately, I don't need to be since there are already mighty fine FDE authors on staff. 

Dynamic Link Libraries will require re-factoring and compiling for 64 bits. That is really a trivial exercise and actually will not take much time to complete.

The only remaining task for FSW will be (optionally) massaging the material properties to enable PBR. That will take a bit of effort at first unless one has already had some experience with other projects.

Under the hood though, both products retain most of their ESP roots.

[Paraffin 2,197]

9 minutes ago, n4gix said:

Dynamic Link Libraries will require re-factoring and compiling for 64 bits. That is really a trivial exercise and actually will not take much time to complete.

The only remaining task for FSW will be (optionally) massaging the material properties to enable PBR. That will take a bit of effort at first unless one has already had some experience with other projects.

Under the hood though, both products retain most of their ESP roots.

I'm not a developer, but one thing that occurs to me is that we don't know how the memory constraints might differ between FSW and an eventual 64-bit P3D. The huge additional address space is there in theory, but how a developer decides to use it can vary, especially when it comes to minimum system requirements to attract more users. 

For example, the new DTG FSW is listing a minimum system RAM of 4 GB. That seems a little skimpy for a 64-bit program, but maybe they're just going for the widest possible user base. For comparison, the minimum spec for Aerofly FS2 is 8 GB, for XP11 it's also 8 GB (and X-Plane really likes to have more, a lot more).

If that 4 GB minimum spec remains for FSW, it means they're guaranteeing that any product you buy for their sim will at least run within that much system RAM... even if it may crawl when doing so. That's a constraint.

We don't know what the minimum spec for system RAM will be for a 64-bit P3D, but I'd be surprised if it isn't closer to 8 GB... or even more, given their target market. If that's true (a lot of assumptions here, I know), then it might complicate the idea of "simply" porting the same 64-bit version for two different sims.

[SmokeDiddy 262]

1 hour ago, Paraffin said:

If that 4 GB minimum spec remains for FSW, it means they're guaranteeing that any product you buy for their sim will at least run within that much system RAM... even if it may crawl when doing so. That's a constraint.

We don't know what the minimum spec for system RAM will be for a 64-bit P3D, but I'd be surprised if it isn't closer to 8 GB... or even more, given their target market. If that's true (a lot of assumptions here, I know), then it might complicate the idea of "simply" porting the same 64-bit version for two different sims.

These are minimum requirements.  It looks like they are marketing FSW to a broad range of systems.  Sure it will work with these specs, but will work better with higher systems specs.  I don't think in this case it is a constraint IMO, but the point you're making is logical.