Why I bought FSW

[warbirds 555]

I bought it because:

It was only 25 bucks. Now how many times have you bought a new aircraft for P3D or FSX or Xplane and flew it only a few times and now it just sits in  your hangar? How much did that hangar queen cost you,,more than 25 bucks I would imagine. I look at FSW as a great cheap way to get several very nice new planes plus a new look and feel flight sim. So 25 bucks for FSW or 50 bucks for my next hangar queen? 

Do I like it?

I am not sure at this point. I like the graphics and the quality of the stock planes and I really like the weather effects. I look at it like it is my rainy day simulator just as Xplane11 is my night simulator and P3D is my airline simulator. These simulators all have a place and a time for use in my life so why limit myself to just one when  I can have several to choose from depending on how I want to fly or what and where I want to fly. 

Do I think it will improve with time?

Maybe. Many of you compare it to  their train simulator and say it has not improved over the years  - but it has. I had the first one they put out and now have the current one and it looks and runs so much better than the previous versions and also there is a ton of content for it out there. So I have  hopes that FSW will improve but if not, I will still use it because, as I said, the more sims the better. 

[Elvensmith 165]

The Train Simulator improved mainly because of quality of third party items produced outside DTG and heavy scripting (and decent sound recording for loco's)  to get round the core limitations which persist in Railworks/TS20xx to this day.

 

Having re-acquired FSW I'm prepared to wait out and see out the potential, while I save up the pennies and Steam vouchers to at some point buy XP11.

[pmb 5,137]

12 minutes ago, warbirds said:

Do I think it will improve with time?

It may improve. However I doubt Dovetail will be able to keep pace with or even narrow the gap to Lockheed Martin, Laminar Research, and IPACS who quickly step forward as well. 

I had quite high hopes in Dovetail initally (3 years ago), but after their pointless Steam threads, cryptic press releases, questionnaire, the failed FlightSchool, and finally EA FSW, I lost all hope this becoming a competitor to P3D, XP, and AF. Besides, they completely missed the goal with their ill-defined SDK and addon policies.

I may follow development to some extent just to stay informed, but certainly I am not going to spend any cent for addons.

Kind regards, Michael

[JRBarrett 3,049]

My reasons for buying FSW are very similar. I just updated my GPU to a 1080 Ti - mainly for the upcoming release of P3D V4, but it will be ideally suited for the new 64 bit, GPU-driven architecture of FSW as well. 

The price is certainly reasonable. It is obviously lacking many features in its current state - but I fully expected that. I enjoy testing software, and it will be (for me) rather fun to watch the progress of FSW in upcoming weeks and months as new features are added.

It may turn out to be a great new platform - or a dog. Much to early to tell, but it will be interesting to see where DTG takes it.

I will always have P3D and XP-11 for my "serious simming". FSW may grow into an equally serious contender in the FS world - but if not, I certainly have not lost anything by giving it a try.

[warbirds 555]

Some of you are missing the point of my post. $25 bucks,,say it again, twenty five bucks! I just bought 7 very nice aircraft and got a free flight simulator as well for $25 bucks. The last aircraft I bought for P3D was $135.

Value was one point but variety is another point I made. Do you go to the same restaurant and order the same food each time you go out to eat? If you do then you should just stick with one simulator but for me, variety is much more interesting in food and in flight simulators. 

Sure I will get P3Dv4 and I am sure I will love it but does P3Dv4 have global dynamic lighting like Xplane? No. Does P3Dv4 have realistic rain effects on the windscreen, or any rain on the windscreen? No, except for a couple planes from enthusiastic developers such as Real Flight. So I will use FSW for weather effects when I want to fly low and slow in the rain. I will use P3Dv4 for cross country or long distance airliner flights. I will use Xplane11 for night, dawn and evening flights. I will also buy Aerofly2 just to have another type of experience. 

I cannot see any reason to limit my thinking or being narrow minded about a computer sim or game. The more the merrier as they say. 

[fsxkitty 62]

The way I see it, buying FSW right now is like buying shares in Apple 15 years ago. It's not that great at the moment, but it will get better over time and you'll get a lot for a small investment.

[YukonPete 586]

I think FSW already has a nail in its coffin. Beta release time couldn't be worse. We have plenty of choice in 64bit now. XP, Aerofly, and as of next week P3D v4. I think after the disaster that was flight school many would be customers like myself don't see DT as a reliable option. I have serious doubts FSW will ever get to the level of the other three simulators.  They would have to produce something amazing to win me over and I just don't see it. Yes I have FSW ( got it free ) and yes I know its an early beta. Still doesn't change DTG history and my lack of faith.

[Chock 17,769]

35 minutes ago, petkez said:

I think FSW already has a nail in its coffin. Beta release time couldn't be worse. We have plenty of choice in 64bit now. XP, Aerofly, and as of next week P3D v4. I think after the disaster that was flight school many would be customers like myself don't see DT as a reliable option. I have serious doubts FSW will ever get to the level of the other three simulators.  They would have to produce something amazing to win me over and I just don't see it. Yes I have FSW ( got it free ) and yes I know its an early beta. Still doesn't change DTG history and my lack of faith.

First up, it's not in beta, it is early access, which is very different. Plenty of choice? AeroFly is still early access and has no AI, no atc and limited avionics and no realtime weather, XP has poor ATC (and no decent payware alternative yet), no realtime weather and no decent flight planner, and P3D is literally ten times the price of FSW. Yes it is indicative of things to comes, but I'd hardly call it an embarrassment of riches at the moment.

Frankly, for 20 notes, or in my case free (well sort of, since I had bought Flight School for a tenner), it's worth a punt for anyone who likes flight sims, at least in my opinion, since even in its stripped back EA status, it still has better ATC than either XP or AeroFly and is cheaper than either of them. Don't get me wrong, I've got all of them and there are things to recommend in all of them, but let's be honest, XP and AeroFly need work, and one of them is a released product which costs 60 quid and even more if you add some improved ATC, AI, flight planning and some decent aeroplanes.

You get a few nice GA aeroplanes in FSW (so that's certainly more than the price of entry, given that they are payware Carenado models). You get AccuFeel built in (that's another tenner if you buy it for FSX). You also get a bunch of enjoyable missions (some of which are very challenging, particularly the 'At A Stretch' one in the Piper Super Cub where you run out of fuel and have to get it over some mountains into a distant airfield - it took me loads of goes to complete that one, and I'm a glider pilot in real life too lol, so I thought it was gonna be easy). You get a very comprehensive set of Flying lessons built in, from ab initio in a Piper Super Cub, right up to doing IFR, Twin and Night ratings, and unlike with most sims that have tutorials, it makes you clock up quite a few hours before it will let you access all of them too, which is kind of a nice bit of attention to detail. You get Orbx scenery. You get a slightly tweaked up nav database in comparison to FS. You get some slightly tweaked up ATC. You get a nice shiny modern GUI interface.

And of course you get to have your say on what they should be doing with it via commenting and bug reporting to DTG, and that is not to be underestimated: We know DTG's roadmap is to make money off it via the sale of DLC through Steam, and they won't manage that if people are not happy with the base platform, so it is a priority for DTG to make FSW something users will like and want to enhance with payware add ons.

Even in its early access state, it runs better than FSX, loads faster than it, looks better than FSX in default and is only going to improve on that already pleasing state of affairs as evidenced by the fact that they had a patch out for it in less than a week. There are many exciting possibilities with it, for example it will quite probably have trueSKY weather depiction in it shortly, which generates sky atmospherics data in real time, creating volumetric clouds and atmospherics (so that includes day/night lighting stars etc), and all of that is optimsed for the GPU, which is good news for flight simming because the sky is the bit we are actually travelling through in our virtual flights.

Seriously, whaddya want for 20 quid?!! You can't even get a decent GA payware add-on aeroplane for that much.

[fs4fun 366]

As the OP has said, getting FSW is minimal risk in terms of investment. For me it was a whopping $15. For that money you get a decent amount of content, in terms of missions and aircraft which for default aircraft are top notch. Yes they have some bugs but so has every Carenado aircraft when it's shipped LOL. It's like buying a ticket to a show which might end well or badly. Either way I got my money's worth.

In terms of development velocity, DTG is moving at a good pace which I see as moving faster than the other devs. LM has had the ESP code base for 8 years. DTG in a fraction of the time got the same code to 64-bit, PBR rendering, DX11, revamped UI, added really great cockpit shadows and windshield rain effects, Steam integration, added Mission editor, revamped multi-player and lots of other little things, plus replaced the default aircraft with much higher quality ones, new missions, scenery, nav data, etc. I'm curious to see what TrueSky integration will bring. DTG is talking about a major overhaul of weather system and ATC coming, something the non-ESP devs continue to not deliver after 10 or 20 years of development.

My reading of the P3D license says I can't use it, so either I stick with FSX and FSW, or I move on to a non-ESP platform. I'm not in a rush to jump ship from ESP which I'm comfortable with, but if FSW doesn't pan out that's what I'll do eventually.

[Chock 17,769]

9 minutes ago, fshobby said:

My reading of the P3D license says I can't use it, so either I stick with FSX and FSW, or I move on to a non-ESP platform. I'm not in a rush to jump ship from ESP which I'm comfortable with, but if FSW doesn't pan out that's what I'll do eventually.

You absolutely can use P3D legitimately, just not necessarily for 60 quid with the Academic License. But certainly for 200 quid and a Pro license: The Professional License allows usage for, to quote LM exactly: 'The Professional license is available to those that are training, instructing, simulating, or learning', and anyone flying a flight sim for fun is surely doing at least one of those which I highlighted, and probably all three.

[Paraffin 2,197]

12 minutes ago, Chock said:

First up, it's not in beta, it is early access, which is very different. Plenty of choice? AeroFly is still early access and has no AI, no atc and limited avionics and no realtime weather, XP has poor ATC (and no decent payware alternative yet), no realtime weather and no decent flight planner, and P3D is literally ten times the price of FSW. Yes it is indicative of things to comes, but I'd hardly call it an embarrassment of riches at the moment.

Let's keep the record straight here: XP has realtime weather injection built-in as default, with several other options as free or payware add-ons. XP has no internal flight planner but again, several good options as free or payware add-ons.

I know there are modern airline enthusiasts who are waiting until XP has better ATC and more study-level aircraft, but as a General Aviation flight simulator, it's reasonable to compare XP to FSW in terms of intended market. Same thing with Aerofly FS2. P3D is in a different situation due to the much larger add-on market that props up that particular sim.

As for the OP's point about "value" with the included fleet for just $25, well, it depends on how you feel about Piper piston props, I guess. 

I fly mostly turboprops and helicopters, neither of which are in the first release and will probably show up as payware later on (I don't fly FSX so I can't experiment with older models that might work).

I had intended to buy FSW in Early Access, just to help stimulate competition that might result in improvements for my primary flight sim. But I can't do that in good conscience until they do something about the poor LOD and pop-in artifacts in the scenery. From my perspective, it's not a competitive option even at $25 until they fix some of these legacy problems with the scenery engine.

[ca_metal 2,015]

DTG already have in mind most enthusiasts won´t leave their main sims for FSW, it´s a new not improved product. 

Give them time, I´m betting on their model. Let´s see what happens in the future. In the mean time I will keep using my other sims. 

[fs4fun 366]

14 minutes ago, Chock said:

You absolutely can use P3D legitimately, just not necessarily for 60 quid with the Academic License. But certainly for 200 quid and a Pro license: The Professional License allows usage for, to quote LM's EULA exactly: 'The Professional license is available to those that are training, instructing, simulating, or learning', and anyone flying a flight sim for fun is surely doing at least one of those which I highlighted, and probably all three.

Sorry I'm intentionally avoiding license discussions as they are censored at AVSIM. The licenses are here: http://www.prepar3d.com/support/end-user-license-agreement-eula/. They do not contain the language you quoted. I will just say that I have read the actual license and believe I interpreted it correctly. My purpose of using a flight sim is solely for personal entertainment. Some of the above might happen as side effects, but those are not the purposes of use. Seriously, "simulating"? That's like saying I bought a car for the purposes of "driving". LOL

EDIT: Oh yeah and I'm not paying $200 for a flight sim game. Too expensive for my purposes.

[Chock 17,769]

15 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

Let's keep the record straight here: XP has realtime weather injection built-in as default, with several other options as free or payware add-ons. XP has no internal flight planner but again, several good options as free or payware add-ons.

No, it doesn't, it can snapshot a NOAH METAR at specified intervals which it then interprets by using the nearest suitable one of its presets, but that is in no way realtime accurate custom-created weather injection in the manner which most people who have used even the default FS METAR weather generation understand it to be (and even that which XPlane does actually do is buggy and can take a few goes before it eventually kicks in).

Yes there are several flight planner options, of which Goodway is about the best one I've bought, but it doesn't always gel well with either the default ATC or other payware options such as JARDesign's ATC, and so it ends up not being as usable as one would like. That is the reality of it, believe me, I wish it wasn't, because I'd love to be able to operate my Flight Factors A350 realistically in XPlane, and for the most part, I can't because of those limitations. If this were not so, simmers into heavy metal IFR airliner ops would have been all over XPlane, because it has some way better airliners than FS does available for it, which sadly, are hogtied by a base sim which needs better ways to support their accurate operation. Until it does have those things, which I truly hope it gets, and imagine it will at some point, so that I can use my really cool A350 realistically, it is not a really usable airliner sim, which is a shame because many things in XP make some stuff in FS look like a joke, for example the accurate way in which runways undulate over the terrain.

[vololiberista 205]

4 minutes ago, fshobby said:

 Seriously, "simulating"? That's like saying I bought a car for the purposes of "driving". LOL

That depends on whether you enjoy driving or not. If you enjoy driving then P3D's not for you!!!