1 hour ago, Chock said:

To some extent that is true, but if that was the only criteria, then Captain Sim aeroplanes would typically be regarded above all others, since their VCs are invariably a lot better looking than most offerings, but we all know that's not what most people who buy add-on airliners think.

 

25 minutes ago, Holdit said:

I was going to make the same point but referencing Carenado... 

And here we go again with the self-referential "serious simmer". "Would be regarded above all others" by who?

For example, according to Google Trends, Carenado alone is vastly more popular than realair, milviz and a2a put together:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?cat=8&q="carenado","real air" %2B "realair" %2B "milviz" %2B "a2a simulations"

I presume Carenado is the best selling GA vendor. So, statistically speaking, Carenado aircrafts are considered above all other competitors by the most number of people.

Why should Carenado users be in any way considered "inferior" to the "serious" simmers here?

 

5 minutes ago, Murmur said:

For example, according to Google Trends, Carenado alone is vastly more popular than realair, milviz and a2a put together:

That made me chuckle.  Basing market share on Google searches might be biased by how many problems there are with a product. I'm not disputing that Carenado sells lots of different kinds of aircraft and the other three companies are boutique operations. But I'd also speculate that mass market vendor has a less knowledgeable user base that needs more assistance.

19 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

That made me chuckle.  Basing market share on Google searches might be biased by how many problems there are with a product. I'm not disputing that Carenado sells lots of different kinds of aircraft and the other three companies are boutique operations. But I'd also speculate that mass market vendor has a less knowledgeable user base that needs more assistance.

Google trends is not proportional to total sales, but when the difference between them is so great, it's not unreasonable to speculate that Carenado is also the most selling one.

Infact, looking at another source (youtube videos loaded in the last month), Carenado comes again on top (considering that it also sells products for X-Plane, but they're sales anyway!).

 

39 minutes ago, Murmur said:

Why should Carenado users be in any way considered "inferior" to the "serious" simmers here?

For the same reason that EL James should be considered inferior to JD Salinger, i.e. the number of sales does not necessarily reflect the quality of the product. Sure, Fifty Shades of Grey might have sold 125 million copies, whereas The Catcher in the Rye has apparently sold less than half that number, but really, is anyone at all going to say the bigger seller of the two is the more serious literary work?

Google "Carenado Mayo 2013" if you are interested in their stated business model including % sales.

Cheers

Martin

2 minutes ago, Chock said:

For the same reason that EL James should be considered inferior to JD Salinger, i.e. the number of sales does not reflect the quality of the product. Sure, Fifty Shades of Grey might have sold 125 million copies, whereas The Catcher in the Rye has apparently sold less than half that number, but really, is anyone at all going to say the bigger seller of the two is the more serious literary work?

But if, for someone, having more immersive visuals is a higher priority than having the last circuit breaker simulated, who are you to judge him inferior?

If there's someone who, for whatever reason can't fly for real, and judges the virtual cockpit visuals as a vastly higher priority in order to recreate a plausible immersion of flying rather than having the last button of the GPS behave correctly, who are you to judge him inferior?

 

1 minute ago, Murmur said:

But if, for someone, having more immersive visuals is a higher priority than having the last circuit breaker simulated, who are you to judge him inferior?

If there's someone who, for whatever reason can't fly for real, and judges the virtual cockpit visuals as a vastly higher priority in order to recreate a plausible immersion of flying rather than having the last button of the GPS behave correctly, who are you to judge him inferior?

I'm not judging anyone as inferior, you're the one who wrote that. I merely wrote that someone one could regard as a 'serious simmer' - i.e. a term which most people would take to mean the people who want every system replicated as per the real thing - will probably rate systems simulation as an important part of why they prefer a particular simulated aeroplane.

I don't number myself as either serious or casual when it comes to flight sims, nor would I force that classification on anyone else either, because I tend to like simple aeroplanes as much as I like complex ones, depending on the mood I'm in and what I want to do. Anyone who has ever read any of my posts will know I'm just as much an advocate of Virtualcol's simple add-ons with their pretty exterior models and basic avionics as I am those of fancier and more complex add-ons from A2A, FSL etc.

I don't like Virtual Cockpit-only aircraft, I like a 2D panel to work in and EVERYONE thinks I'm inferior. So what? I think the VC-only simmers are fools for paying good money for half a plane, and they say "so what" back. Impasse.

Back to Carenado's website. I recently spent an entire evening contributing to Google's stats on Carenado's website looking for a plane that DID have a 2D panel. Only a couple did, but not the ones I wanted. No sale.

1 hour ago, Murmur said:

And here we go again with the self-referential "serious simmer". "Would be regarded above all others" by who?

Yep, quality in a plane model means different things to different people, and there's a wide range of ways one can define "serious." 

For example, the STMA model of the PC-12 in X-Plane has a reputation for having the most accurate flight model and avionics of the three (I think?) models available. But the cockpit is ugly, with flat low-res textures. The plane model itself is low-poly too, where you can see angles in the nose nacelle looking out of the front windscreen instead of a curved surface. It looks more like a XP9 plane than a contemporary product. The Carenado PC-12 doesn't have quite the same flight model and avionics accuracy, but the cockpit is beautifully modeled with high-res textures and great lighting. That's the model I fly.

Why does this matter to me? It's because a PC-12 is one of the two aircraft I "own" in the FSEconomy game, where I do almost all my civilian flight simming (the other is a Bell 412 helicopter). This means I spend hundreds of hours staring at that cockpit. If I'm going to do that, then by gum I want that cockpit to look great. I won't spend hundreds of hours looking at a poorly-done cockpit (or rather, one that was great 5 or 6 years ago, but isn't so great now).

This shouldn't be taken as a hint by DTG that they can get away with less accuracy in the flight modeling. What we all want, I think, is a balance of eye candy and accuracy. I'm hopeful that the flight accuracy will be bumped up a notch with Carenado's upcoming v11 version of that PC-12.

1 hour ago, Murmur said:

And here we go again with the self-referential "serious simmer"

The point isn't who is a serious simmer and who isn't. If you read back up the post history you'll see that what prompted Captain Sim/Carenado comments it was the statement that the simming experience is all about the visuals. A point with which I would disagree, even though that doesn't mean I place no value on visuals.

The popularity of aircraft that offer deeper systems fidelity, such as those by A2A and PMDG, and the fact that those developers sell enough to keep themselves in business, suggests to me that plenty of simmers think it's more than just about the graphics.

3 hours ago, Chock said:

To some extent that is true, but if that was the only criteria, then Captain Sim aeroplanes would typically be regarded above all others, since their VCs are invariably a lot better looking than most offerings, but we all know that's not what most people who buy add-on airliners think.

That was not quite the way I meant it... what I did mean is that the flight behavior, avionics, you name it,  whatever you value in the flightsim,  comes to you via the computer monitor  (and speakers..)

Hence the visuals that you experience when flying the flightsim all contribute to giving you that sense of  "being in the cockpit of a real plane"..

Wel yup, that certainly is true.