Well, that it is "a bit" to early for early access is obvious, but we have to admit that they had a reason. A year of silence without any word after P3D v4 was released would have been more or less the death sentence.

Now the situation is only a bit difficult..

ButI don´t really think that they would want to compete directly with P3D v4 or X-Plane 11. Both have more experience and know their code much better. Since both won´t stop improving their systems it is extremly difficult to get into striking distance on a technical level.

Instead the animated passengers are probably more something like the jobs that we had in Microsoft Flight. It would follow their missions concept, works well with the different GA planes and would probably attract some interest on Steam.

15 minutes ago, A32xx said:

All the gauges, switches, buttons etc., in the FSW VC's are now 64-bit and all earlier sims' VC gauges were 32-bit, so no, they won't work.

 

Many of the Eaglet's gauges do work in that they animate correctly. I think they are all XML coded, so 64-bit is not a factor. Ant's EFIS and custom GPS code is broken and I believe that is because DTG ripped out legacy 2D gauge drawing code (this was hinted at by someone at fsdeveloper). The "working" gauges are animated 3D objects, so animation code still works as before but apparently mouse handling has changed.

 

1 hour ago, fshobby said:

DTG may have figured the default planes were the wow factor. They really are very beautifully modeled and rendered, with some nice animations.

But most of us already have much better aircraft on other platforms so when we look at the FSW aircraft they don't look particularly special. I agree with what's been said earlier that FSW needs a killer feature to really get people excited. If it's no better than what people already have (or worse), why would they change? It needs something to draw customers in now and just promising great things in the future (the "long haul") isn't necessarily going to achieve that. Expecting people to just have faith isn't a great marketing strategy.

3 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

FSW needs a killer feature

I am inclined to agree with you, for purely economic reasons, i have purchased all my aircraft / add ins for P3D, no way i am doing that again for FSW, the PMDG stuff alone is over £300.

...so what "killer feature" would make you think seriously about moving to that platform?

3 minutes ago, WotanUK said:

...so what "killer feature" would make you think seriously about moving to that platform?

For me, a realistic ATC system which worked well with plenty of AI without crippling the sim, or maybe a weather engine with high-end graphics (moving clouds, cloud shadows and believable 3D textures which responded to changing conditions and lighting).

39 minutes ago, WotanUK said:

I am inclined to agree with you, for purely economic reasons, i have purchased all my aircraft / add ins for P3D, no way i am doing that again for FSW, the PMDG stuff alone is over £300.

...so what "killer feature" would make you think seriously about moving to that platform?

From what I could tell before uninstalling FSW last week, the main thrust is to move towards an adventure game environment.

If you set up a flightplan, you are instantly reminded of what you can win by completing the flight..

This is in total contradiction to the free flight mode that we are all familiar with from FSX.

It really does remind me of MS Flight where it was all about the "fun" one could have, competing for rewards..

Not the "killer feature" I was looking for... actually quite the opposite.. 

Nothing wrong with an adventure game setup as it would at least be different (we don't need FSW to just progress to where P3D is...what would even be the point?).

The simple answer is graphics and depth have to massively be improved to make it viable. If you are gonna do an adventure/RPG type game, something like Elite dangerous but with airplanes, that could totally work and be really cool. But you've gotta get the actual presentation to a modern level to really attract the masses...and that's gonna be really tough on this engine.

25 minutes ago, bonchie said:

Nothing wrong with an adventure game setup as it would at least be different (we don't need FSW to just progress to where P3D is...what would even be the point?).

 

Agreed!

But some are making the point that FSW could become the new mainstream flightsim platform (after FSX).

To me:

P3DV4 = FSXI

FSW = Flight 2.0,

and hopefully both very successful 

The current mainstream flightsim platform would surely be Infinite Flight, with 500,000 users:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uJSQulnTeD4

Well if FSW were counting on their rain effects on the windsheild being what makes them stand out from all the others then think again.

LM have announced that they are currently working on rain effects.

Looks like another nail has just been added to the coffin.

4 hours ago, fshobby said:

Many of the Eaglet's gauges do work in that they animate correctly. I think they are all XML coded, so 64-bit is not a factor. Ant's EFIS and custom GPS code is broken and I believe that is because DTG ripped out legacy 2D gauge drawing code (this was hinted at by someone at fsdeveloper). The "working" gauges are animated 3D objects, so animation code still works as before but apparently mouse handling has changed.

 

DTG has changed the rendering engine from GDI+ to D3D for XML gauges, so even though the script for their new GPS gauges looks nearly identical, there's enough difference such that FSX/P3D XML scripts won't run at all.

Also, all XML gauges are scripted in the FSX Schema, so that older, friendlier FS9 Schema gauges will not even load.

Finally, new parameters are used in the panel.cfg files, which also contribute to incompatibility with FSX/P3D XML gauges:

[Window00]
Background_color=0,0,0
size_mm=520,378
window_size= 0.5
window_pos= 0.200, 0.200
visible=0
ident=GNS530
render_d3d=1
use_emissive=1
gauge00=GNS530_d3d!GPS_530_d3d,0,0,520,378

4 hours ago, vortex681 said:

when we look at the FSW aircraft they don't look particularly special

I disagree: FSX and P3D still use ancient Blinn shaders and materials, they don't stand up to FSW's PBR rendering.

Are payware FSX and P3D aircraft better than default FSW aircraft? Sure, in terms of systems/gauges and probably flight modelling, but payware aircraft will come out for FSW eventually and there's no reason they will not be able to match up on those terms.

34 minutes ago, n4gix said:

DTG has changed the rendering engine from GDI+ to D3D for XML gauges, so even though the script for their new GPS gauges looks nearly identical, there's enough difference such that FSX/P3D XML scripts won't run at all.

 

Thanks for the insights, very interesting!

2 hours ago, A32xx said:

The current mainstream flightsim platform would surely be Infinite Flight, with 500,000 users:

 

Or FSX:SE which shows 800K owners on steamspy

I gave up speculating on what I think FSW might or might not look like in the future.  I'll keep riding this train (no pun intended) till it gets to the station.  I'm not out anything by doing so.  In the end, I believe DTG will deliver - probably won't be perfect, but I have never seen a perfect sim.  

Oh, thanks for the insights @fshobby!  Very interesting....hahahaha