The next Best Thing would probably be...

[jcomm 5,890]

Learning that A2A and Aerosoft are also joining soon with their offers.

I feel the need for my A2A C172, C182, Comanche, P51d cicil and military, Spitfires, B377... Porting them to DFW, even paying an upgrade fee would be simply Magic!

Same appiles to my good old Aerosoft Airbus, which, after all, gave me more joy than any other Airbus for MSFS and derivates I have used... Ah! And the Twotter :-)

While Madeira airport in default FSW looks better than in default FSX:SE, I woudl also be glad to port my only add-on scenery for FSX into FSW...

From Flight 1 I would gladly bring up the PIC 767 !!!

From Carenado, my only FSX add-on and one I really appreciate is the B1900d, which I would really like to have here too.

And my one and only Milviz acquisition, and a rather recent one - the UH-1H - would be a charm to fly here too!

Bring them all to STEAM :-)

[Chock 17,769]

Right on. Got a laundry list of things I'd be happy to pay an upgrade fee for to get them into FSW. I know some of them are quite likely to get there, some less so, but I've got my fingers crossed for these ones in particular...

iFly 737 NG, or the the PMDG NG

PMDG 747-400

Lionheart Bellanca Viking

A2A and Aeroplane Heaven B17G and B17F

Milviz UH-1 Huey

FSD Piper Turbo Saratoga

FlySimWare Cessna C441 Conquest II

Just Flight Trinidad and Tobago

Virtualcol ATR42/72

Captain Sim 727 and 707

Air Hauler

Pro ATC

 

 

 

 

[TechguyMaxC 516]

DTG definitely needs to get those 3rd party devs on board.  The problem now is that P3D v4 is out and 64-bit also.  They're going to have to differentiate themselves otherwise we've just got 2 apple pies on the table.  

[pedrotrindade 335]

11 minutes ago, TechguyMaxC said:

 we've just got 2 apple pies on the table.  

And one of them without sugar!

[ca_metal 2,015]

22 minutes ago, pedrotrindade said:

And one of them without sugar!

Too soon to infer that. :) 

Let the things flow and we will know. 

[Chock 17,769]

48 minutes ago, TechguyMaxC said:

DTG definitely needs to get those 3rd party devs on board.  The problem now is that P3D v4 is out and 64-bit also.  They're going to have to differentiate themselves otherwise we've just got 2 apple pies on the table.  

Actually neither of them is 'out' yet. P3D's new version is still a few days from release and FSW is only in early access, but I take your point, nevertheless, a big point which differentiates them already is that one of them is ten times the cost of the other one (about 20 quid for FSW, about 200 quid for a P3D licence, or FSW for free if one bought Flight School), so as far as sugar is concerned, I know which one leaves a sweeter taste wallet-wise. Whether P3D will be 180 quid better remains to be seen.

Moreover, this doesn't include the fact that if FSX versus P3D add on licensing is anything to go by, P3D versions may well be slightly dearer than those for FSW, adding another ongoing cost disparity, for example, 40 dollars more for the P3D version of the FSL A320 in P3D as opposed to FSX and a very similar price difference for PMDG's 747-400 between the two platforms. Over time, this is not an inconsiderable additional amount of money if one buys a lot of add-ons.

[Pastaiolo 1,686]

I don't feel the need to pay for the same addon on another platform, to be honest.

If anything, i would like to see a plane we haven't seen and used before.

[TechguyMaxC 516]

21 minutes ago, Chock said:

Actually neither of them is 'out' yet. P3D's new version is still a few days from release and FSW is only in early access, but I take your point, nevertheless, a big point which differentiates them already is that one of them is ten times the cost of the other one (about 20 quid for FSW, about 200 quid for a P3D licence, or FSW for free if one bought Flight School), so as far as sugar is concerned, I know which one leaves a sweeter taste wallet-wise. Whether P3D will be 180 quid better remains to be seen.

Moreover, this doesn't include the fact that if FSX versus P3D add on licensing is anything to go by, P3D versions may well be slightly dearer than those for FSW, adding another ongoing cost disparity, for example, 40 dollars more for the P3D version of the FSL A320 in P3D as opposed to FSX and a very similar price difference for PMDG's 747-400 between the two platforms. Over time, this is not an inconsiderable additional amount of money if one buys a lot of add-ons.

Neither is "out" in a full release capacity, but P3D being mere days away it feels like splitting hairs at this point.  

As for add-on costs, for me it looks like my $2500 worth of add-ons will largely port over to v4 without issue, with only PMDG and A2A aircraft needing to be repurchased for licensing issues.  That might just be worth it for me.  

[carbonbasedlifeform 179]

1 hour ago, TechguyMaxC said:

DTG definitely needs to get those 3rd party devs on board.  The problem now is that P3D v4 is out and 64-bit also.  They're going to have to differentiate themselves otherwise we've just got 2 apple pies on the table.  

Steam will be a differentiator. It opens up a huge base of customers. P3D is a ticking time bomb because of its EULA issues.

Personally I need the following to leave FSX:

A2A

Rex

orbx

As far as I know all three of these have already stated or shown their support for FSW.

[TechguyMaxC 516]

ORBX is definitely on board, I don't know about anyone else though.  

[G-RFRY 1,708]

If you look at who was willing to put there product on steam for FSX:SE will give you some idea, hosting on steam did not put them off they made some money.

Ray Fry.

[Chock 17,769]

49 minutes ago, TechguyMaxC said:

ORBX is definitely on board, I don't know about anyone else though.  

A2A (rather obviously, since one of their products is already built-in to FSW), Carenado (since several of their products are part of FSW too). Turbulent Designs, Orbx (since they to provided some of FSW's content), Just Flight, since they were already on board with Steam stuff for FSX and have stated that they will continue to do stuff with DTG, including getting some of their present products into FSW, and JF have a history of giving new sims a crack, they even made stuff a few aeroplanes for AeroFly FS1.

I seem to recall Milviz said they'll look into it, which means they probably will at least give it a shot with one of their products to see if the sales model garners them something, which it undoubtedly will given that Steam has 125 million registered users, which by any stretch of the imagination, is a hell of a potential customer base lol.

[CaribbeanCLANK 134]

After yesterday, I am not as uncertain as I once was about my sim platform moving forward. I am sorry to say FSW does appear to be the least attractive option for me.

 I am currently using FSX:SE and own add-ons from Orbx, FSDreamTeam, FlightBeam, FSFX Packages,Taxi2Gate, Aerosoft, Majestic, PMDG, FlyTampa, HiFi Simulations, and a few others. I will have to buy my 3 PMDG aircraft again and also my Active Sky 16 but atleast I know most of my favorite add-on will work in the new platform that was announced yesterday. On the other hand my library of add-ons from FSdreamteam, FlightBeam and Orbx can be moved over to the new platform at no extra cost. That is very appealing to me. 

At the moment there are too many unanswered question for me to take FSW seriously. I do wish DTG well but at this time it is very unlikely I will support their sim at this time.

[jcomm 5,890]

Milviz 737 ( classic ) would be another certain buy for me :-)

P3D is not an option for me. Honestly I can be fine with good GA or even business jet offers, and there are quite a few that come into my mind...

Then, the fact that there is a huge difference in terms of money spent on add-ons for each platform is also a factor for me.

Then, the most important factor in evaluating a flight simulation platform is the flight dynamics model, followed by systems modelling, and in that area P3Dv4 and DTG FSW share the very same base, still inherited from good old MSFS.

Finally the fact that FSX:SE was, at it's time of release, my best alternative for FSX boxed or GFWL... and I am thankful to Dovetail for having had the guts to port it into Steam in the very first place.

I can only look forward for whatever becomes available with time ... :-)

And, last but not least, I have am empathy with the feelings expressed by FSW's Team, their enthusiasm and the attention and efforts they certainly dedicated to their users, giving us even in EA a very playable and attractive 64 bit civil flight simulator!

[Chock 17,769]

A couple of the things I find interesting and amusing...

For a long time people were saying they doubted DTG's ability to pull off making a 64 bit version of FS which could utilise the GPU, yet as we've seen, even at this eary release stage, they quite clearly have indeed pulled that off.

And then some... FSW goes like the clappers on one of my old PCs with 12Gb of DDR3 memory and an ATI Radeon 6900 (that's a ten year old GPU with 2Gb of memory running at a tectonic 850Mhz). The ten year age of that GPU is of particular relevance here, because if we consider that FSX, upon which FSW is based, is almost exactly ten years old, and so was produced at a time when that and similar GPUs such as the NVidia GeForce 500 were the benchmark, but the sim was not able to utilise those to any extent since it was CPU bound, so this demonstrates that with the right optimisation and hardware usage, FSX would have been pretty much bang on the money performance-wise at the time of its production if it had been geared toward contemporary hardware, and that being the case, the issue of it being 32 bit was quite evidently the other problem, one which has steadily reared its head as fancier add-ons have bloated FSX to its limit. With both issues addressed, as they have been even at this early stage, FSW is clearly going to be able to go ballistic in terms of frame rates when a finally optimised FSW goes out the door as a finished product.

The other one which I find amusing to say the least, is that lots of people are saying that developers won't like the sales model and won't like not being able to sell on their own sites, both of which are plainly untrue as we have again seen. Major developers such as A2A, Just Flight, Carenado and Orbx amongst others, have quite evidently been able to come to some kind of amicable ageement on that, and are aware that in spite of what people say, DTG have been at pains to repeatedly point out that they will not prevent developers from selling through their own outlets too, not that they should be concerned about that anyway, since I seriously doubt that any FS developer has had 125 million people visit their own stores, unlike with Steam. Yet even if that were not the case, many of them do already sell stuff via a number of other online outlets besides their own, so why they would be concerned about doing so at yet another outlet with a customer base, particularly one with 125 million buyers? Just think about that for a moment - 125 million users, that's equivalent to the entire population of Japan, more than twice the population of the entire UK and not that far short of the population of Russia in its entirety. And the ones I mentioned are just a few of the developers we know about who have come to some arrangement, I daresay there will be many more aware of what a golden opportunity doing a deal with DTG to sell through Steam will do for their bank balances.

People can nay-say all this stuff until they are blue in the face and suggest that DTG's sales model won't work, but DTG are no fools, and they have quite clearly demonstrated with their train sim stuff that they know how to sell add ons for a base simulation, because their train sim has been a massive success in that regard. How successful in fiscal terms? See below....

If you balk at the idea of buying through Steam, it's worth remembering that it regularly has sales where things are priced ridiculously inexpensively, including stuff from DTG's product line. How many of us picked up FSX-SE for a fiver in one of those sales for example? or grabbed one of their train products for a song? I know I have.Thus to suggest that DTG have no clue about how to sell stuff for a base sim platform and are somehow going to repeat the failure of MS Flight with their sales model, is laughable. To illustrate, DTG's Train Simulator 2015 has almost a million users according Steam's stats (994,874 owners to be precise). That's a 24.99 base sim. Ready? Get your calculators out - yup, that's right, total sales turnover for just the base simulation if all units were sold at that price, 24,861,901 million dollars (oh, and 26 cents if we want to be exact). Now to be fair, there is a caveat, since some of those owners will not have paid full whack for it, but many will have and most of those owners will have bought some DLC too, since average play time for it is over 72 hours, and people don't play a game for 72 hours if they don't like the thing.

Any developer who doesn't want a piece of that action is insane.