FSW and its future

[Chock 17,769]

17 hours ago, hypercide said:

Frankly, Just Flight is going to have to bring their game way up when the DLC market opens up for FSW.  Default FSW aircraft are now, at the very least, visually on par with the aircraft in the most current IL2 iterations, and JF doesn't produce anything that looks that good.

To be honest that is kind of the old story of Just Flight and not really the case these days. If you've been keeping up with Just Flight's recent output, you will know they have already more than raised their game of late.

Whilst It's true that some of JF's add ons are 'built to a price' and so not always visually as good as other offerings or sometimes not as feature-rich, not all of even their older add-ons are like that - even some of the inexpensive ones -  for example their BAC 1-11 is an amazingly detailed simulation of the real aeroplane and even more amazing when one takes into account its 25 quid price tag for three different variants of the real aeroplane (including Smiths or Collins avionics depending on the variant), if you can show me another airliner simulation for 25 quid which even comes close to that level of fidelity, I'd like to see it.

Similarly their (again developed by Aeroplane Heaven for them, as was the BAC 1-11) Boeing B17F Flying Fortress is every bit as good looking as anything else out there which is meant to be a B-17, including the Khamsin Studios XPlane B17G and A2A's B17G, and again, that JF B-17F is less that 20 quid to buy.

More recently however, Just Flight's own in-house developed Aerospatiale TB-10 Tobago and TB-20 Trinidad and Piper PA-28R Cherokee Arrow III are good contenders for being the best FSX GA add-on aeroplanes you can buy at present, well on par with any other GA add-on you can get, and it's also worth noting that right here on Avsim, someone requested they make a Turbo variant of the Arrow with the T-Tail, and within weeks, that one was available too, which is nothing short of amazing in terms of customer support, I've never seen any other developer do that. They have more on the way too, including a PA-28-161 Warrior II which looks to be of that same standard.

Seriously, if you really believe that Just Flight 'doesn't produce anything that looks that good', then I'd suggest you look at these screenshots below (I've included some ones of A2A's B17 for comparison too). Believe me, I'm a big fan of that A2A 17, but there is no way on earth it looks better than the AH/JF. The A2A B17 costs way more than the AH/JF one, and to be honest, they pretty much fly about the same and have more or less the same level of features, moreover, if you have Accu-Feel installed in FSX, you've more or less got Accu-Sim with the JF one as well...

JF/Aeroplane Heaven B17F:

A2A B17G:

JF/Aeroplane Heaven B17F:

A2A B17G:

JF TB-10 Tobago:

JF PA-28 Turbo Cherokee Arrow III:

 

[Pugilist2 878]

I think the Justflight B17 looks better than the A2A version although it is older.

[hypercide 97]

Nice screens, but I'll only be sold when I see FSW in-game footage. I've been burned several times by JF screenshots--kinda like, in the old days, buying the whole album on the strength of a single, and then getting home to experience a big fat meh.  Besides, seeing screenshots of FSX aircraft in FSX doesn't really help anymore; after almost a month in FSW, it's really easy to see the massive differences between it and FSX, in respect to the visual quality of the two different sim worlds. I remember when FSX first came out, it was criticized for looking too cartoony; now even a modded-to-the-max FSX (which I had until I shovelled it off my hard drive) just looks flat in comparison to stock FSW. If JF does enter the lists, they better bring something more than FSX port-overs. (I've got the Ants Airplane Tiger Moth into FSW, but as sweet a plane as it is, under the steady clatter of its engine, I can hear its textures are whispering "sorry".)

[Chock 17,769]

8 minutes ago, hypercide said:

Nice screens, but I'll only be sold when I see FSW in-game footage.

Fair enough, here's the JF B17F in FSW...

[bonchie 2,305]

On 6/9/2017 at 7:00 AM, A32xx said:

... or a Defense contract, which is what LM are aiming for, not a small group of flight simmers pretending to be trainee pilots lol.

Whatever makes you feel better. Meanwhile, P3D continues to be the one platform that works most closely with 3rd party sim developers. For only caring about defense contracts, they sure do care a lot about normal simmers. And the shots at P3D users not being "honest" are uncalled for. Whether you like it or not, P3D made a carveout for simmers with no other stipulations. Get over it already. 

[A32xx 129]

16 minutes ago, bonchie said:

Whatever makes you feel better. Meanwhile, P3D continues to be the one platform that works most closely with 3rd party sim developers. For only caring about defense contracts, they sure do care a lot about normal simmers. And the shots at P3D users not being "honest" are uncalled for. Whether you like it or not, P3D made a carveout for simmers with no other stipulations. Get over it already. 

That's good advice. I'm so far over it that I don't want anything to do with it, thanks. LM are working with 3rd party developers so that their add-ons can be built-in to P3D as default aircraft and scenery, if you think that's for normal simmers benefit, dream on.

[sightseer 895]

15 hours ago, hypercide said:

 but as sweet a plane as it is, under the steady clatter of its engine, I can hear its textures are whispering "sorry".)

very artistic way of putting that. :-)

[G-RFRY 1,708]

2 hours ago, bonchie said:

Whatever makes you feel better. Meanwhile, P3D continues to be the one platform that works most closely with 3rd party sim developers. For only caring about defense contracts, they sure do care a lot about normal simmers. And the shots at P3D users not being "honest" are uncalled for. Whether you like it or not, P3D made a carveout for simmers with no other stipulations. Get over it already. 

If I remember right PMDG when asked after P3D first came out they said they had no plans to make P3D compatible product`s how time fly`s.

Ray Fry.

[bonchie 2,305]

On 6/12/2017 at 9:27 AM, A32xx said:

That's good advice. I'm so far over it that I don't want anything to do with it, thanks. LM are working with 3rd party developers so that their add-ons can be built-in to P3D as default aircraft and scenery, if you think that's for normal simmers benefit, dream on.

That literally makes no sense. Aside from a couple of very old Carenado and Milviz planes thrown in years ago, there is no move to make major 3rd party products a part of default P3D. That's not their strategy at all.

You seem bitter, like it's personal. Whatever.

[A32xx 129]

I see no sense in throwing my time and money away on software in the hope that it will magically turn into a legitimate game one day. That's not LM's strategy at all.

[dtrjones 356]

On 09/06/2017 at 1:52 AM, fshobby said:

DTG would be better off getting the sim working properly, fix the bugs, improve performance, finish the weather engine, ATC, turn the flight planner into something decent, deliver the SDK, get third party devs onboard, rewrite the terrain engine, add support for turboprops, jets, helicopters, etc..

Are you sure you didn't steal this from there dev diary! It sounds an awful lot like the stuff they are working on. DG have stated the immediate priority is performance and bugs, followed by cold and dark starts, pretty sure the flight planner is being worked on and weather.

Clearly ATC, terrain, jets, helicopters etc are longer term goals but DG haven't ruled any of this out and there have been hints here and there.

[vortex681 806]

13 hours ago, dtrjones said:

Are you sure you didn't steal this from there dev diary! It sounds an awful lot like the stuff they are working on.

But that's the problem - we really don't know for sure what they're working on! Hints, vague references and promised nonspecific improvements are not really selling their product. DTG need to make it clear what they're actually doing to prove that they're not just reacting to criticism. We need a road map to show us what they want the final product to look like and roughly how long they think it will take to get there - I find it difficult to believe that they don't actually have a long-term plan.

[A32xx 129]

I think DTG have made it clear that they want the final product to be exactly what their Early Access users have asked them for. How long it takes to achieve that depends on what is asked for of course, and Lockheed-Martin have certainly raised the bar on what can be achieved - which has in turn raised the expectations of the flight sim community as a whole. Managing those expectations while keeping the product compatible with Steam and the average users' PC setup is not an enviable task I'm sure we can all agree!

[Arthur42417 193]

i honestly think FSW has no future, i think DTG will abandon it in 2018 just like they abandoned Flight School.

[torium 207]

36 minutes ago, FSXSEPilot said:

i honestly think FSW has no future, i think DTG will abandon it in 2018 just like they abandoned Flight School.

Flight School has been replaced by FSW. Then it would have been a waste of scarce resources to continue with the Flight School - even with support.