A New Sim x64

[hellmike 5]

Hello everyone, recently I saw some producers saying that they would no longer develop for our beloved FSX / FSE to dedicate exclusively to P3D, and I believe that PMDG follow the same path
I have the dovetail for some time, and although I have never flown for a long time in it, occasionally I go in and check it out, and I realize that it is very interesting, and has the advantage of already being an x64 platform, Same structure of the ESF I believe that the conversion would not be so complicated, is it possible that PMDG, like the other producers are looking at this option too? I confess that I would love to see it become an option to P3D, what do you think?

[downscc 1,327]

11 minutes ago, hellmike said:

Hello everyone, recently I saw some producers saying that they would no longer develop for our beloved FSX / FSE to dedicate exclusively to P3D, and I believe that PMDG follow the same path
I have the dovetail for some time, and although I have never flown for a long time in it, occasionally I go in and check it out, and I realize that it is very interesting, and has the advantage of already being an x64 platform, Same structure of the ESF I believe that the conversion would not be so complicated, is it possible that PMDG, like the other producers are looking at this option too? I confess that I would love to see it become an option to P3D, what do you think?

Please note that PMDG's forum rules require us to sign our full names on all posts.

It is highly unlikely that most quality developers will entertain the confiscatory marketing terms that Dovetail demands for participation.  I suppose if you were a small upstart with no market you'd be interested, or if you pulled off a trick like Orbx did to let them use Orbx scenery for what I assume is a cut of the profits.  This subject came up months ago, you are a little late with to the party.

[Chock 17,769]

Some developers are interested in Flight Sim World for sure, and that includes some big name ones too, who've made some quality products, but it's long been known that PMDG were not particularly thrilled with the idea of a similar sales arrangement which would have been the case had Microsoft Flight taken off, whereby DLC would be sold alongside the simulator through Steam, so one assumes the same would apply to the sales model of Flight Sim World and PMDG's disinclination to become involved, however, that's up to them and like any sensible business, they will presumably evaluate things as the market may change. However, I wouldn't hold your breath whilst waiting to see a PMDG airliner in Flight Sim World unless there is a very good reason for PMDG to want to do that given the sales model it has which we know they were not keen on. But, since in large part Flight Sim World is an unknown quantity, who can say whether that would remain the case?

What we can say with reasonable certainty however, is that it is most definitely the case that there is a large market with Steam's games and simulations. Needless to say this is attractive to any developer who wants their product exposed to large numbers of potential buyers, so long as those buyers are happy with your pricing and what you are offering. Thus if you are prepared to do a little investigative work, and extrapolate your findings, you can pretty much see which developers are going to be interested in the possibility of selling via Steam for Flight Sim World, because they are likely to be the developers who are at present selling via that same method for FSX-SE. These would include REX, HiFi simulations, Just Flight etc. But, what also appears to be the case, is that these companies are tending to make their products available via Steam quite a while after they have previously been on sale through either their own websites, where they could better dictate their cut of the RRP upon the initial release of the product, or through other online stores, then, after the initial launch sales have quietened down, they have chosen to explore the additional exposure Steam offers, to effectively relaunch the product through that medium and garner further sales. There are of course a number of companies also dealing directly with DTG where content is concerned, these include A2A, Carenado, Turbulent Simulations, Orbx, and now just recently the developers of trueSkies, which is interesting because that does have the potential to make DTG's new simulation look a lot more sophisticated than Lockheed Martin's P3D at least where weather depiction is concerned. And if that makes it a better flight simulator than P3D, then all bets are gonna be off on where we will be heading should that transpire.

[Nighthwk 566]

Unless something drastic were to change, like as in DTG dropping their ridiculous 30% cut, then I doubt that you will see PMDG or even some other devs, developing for it. Why would they? P3D is already a huge market for them and FSW is still in Alpha basically, with no SDK (that I'm aware of) available yet. With P3D being on v4 already, I don't see that big of an incentive to develop for it. Besides, what Steam user is going to shell out $140+ on an aircraft that they will fly for fun anyway? Default aircraft are good enough for most people, as in the people playing on a console (which DTG stated they are considering porting FSW to) or the people who just want to mess around in a 747, regardless of how many systems it simulates. To entice someone to spend that kind of capital on a game (I think it's safe to call FSW a game as it is marketed as one), there has to be some serious dedication and commitment present, unlikely to be found in the majority of the Steam user base who would see the $140 dollars could be spent on 2 full AAA games and a DLC, rather than one aircraft for one game that they most likely will play for a couple of weeks, then find it to be boring to them and move on to a more exciting game. I'd imagine PMDG is already well aware of this, hence their non-commitment towards FSW.

[Paul_Smith 92]

The market has become too fragmented. For many years there was only FSX, but now we have FSX:SE (32bit), FSW (64biit), P3Dv3 (32bit), P3Dv4(64bit) and XP11(64bit) and they all require separate licenses and are incompatible with each other. Add the fact that where the same product exists for more then one platform, it usually requires a separate purchase.

You want the best tubeliner - you need PMDG 777 on P3Dv4 with ActiveSky2016.

You want the best GA experience? Airfoillabs C172 on XP11 with SimHeaven and Xenviro.

You want to play with other people? FSX:SE, Aerosoft A320, and Vatsim

You want the prettiest out of the box? FSW

You want the cheapest? FSX:SE

You want the best to develop on? XP11
(Of course - all opinions are my own and I will defend them to the death until I change my mind).

At least two if not three of these platforms will fail in the next 18 months, the market is just too small to support them all. All of these platforms have problems so my guess which will survive and which wont is as good as yours, but I wont be spending much money on any of them.

[anden145 2,285]

5 minutes ago, Paul_Smith said:

You want the best to develop on? XP11

Interesting view... especially since developers aren't exactly flocking to it... 

[VeryBumpy 272]

3 minutes ago, Paul_Smith said:

The market has become too fragmented..........but I wont be spending much money on any of them.

Agree fully. I am very happy with my FSX and until one of those you mentioned becomes the 'full monty' replacement to FSX, I am going no where.

[Glynn 405]

1 hour ago, VeryBumpy said:

until one of those you mentioned becomes the 'full monty' replacement to FSX, I am going no where.

What do you feel that P3D lacks compared to FSX ?

P3D has everything FSX ever had, plus it's much further advanced.

[Glynn 405]

1 hour ago, Paul_Smith said:

You want to play with other people? FSX:SE, Aerosoft A320, and Vatsim

You do realise that a lot of us use P3D with Vatsim just fine, why the need for FSX:SE ?

[wanabflyer 53]

1 hour ago, VeryBumpy said:

Agree fully. I am very happy with my FSX and until one of those you mentioned becomes the 'full monty' replacement to FSX, I am going no where.

This is exactly where I am at right now. The only change I made was from FSX to FSX SE to get away from the Microsoft reinstall hassle.

[Paul_Smith 92]

I think some of you are missing the point, my list was to show that there was no longer one right answer, and even when you narrowed down the question, you still shouldn't expect people to agree with you.

There will be no 'full monty' replacement for FSX, as all the options are flawed. P3Dv4 has licensing concerns that technically take it out of the entertainment market. FSW has licensing and marketing concerns that discourage third party developers. Both have been made 64bit though in slightly different ways but both are still based on the decades old single threaded MSC++ codebase that started life in FS98. For the developers, XP11 has a modern code base which is multi threaded by design, but has a much smaller market for 'paid for' add-ons and also has the issues associated with any personality driven project.  

In my opinion, XP11 is the least technically flawed of the currently available platforms, but I am not trying to use it as the basis for feeding my family so I wouldn't expect the likes of PMDG to agree with me.

[wanabflyer 53]

1 hour ago, Paul_Smith said:

I think some of you are missing the point, my list was to show that there was no longer one right answer, and even when you narrowed down the question, you still shouldn't expect people to agree with you.

There will be no 'full monty' replacement for FSX, as all the options are flawed. P3Dv4 has licensing concerns that technically take it out of the entertainment market. FSW has licensing and marketing concerns that discourage third party developers. Both have been made 64bit though in slightly different ways but both are still based on the decades old single threaded MSC++ codebase that started life in FS98. For the developers, XP11 has a modern code base which is multi threaded by design, but has a much smaller market for 'paid for' add-ons and also has the issues associated with any personality driven project.  

In my opinion, XP11 is the least technically flawed of the currently available platforms, but I am not trying to use it as the basis for feeding my family so I wouldn't expect the likes of PMDG to agree with me.

Which is exactly why I am sitting on a fence.

[jrw4 624]

I come to P3D originally from XPlane 9 and 10, via FSX. It was always very frustrating in FSX and P3D to observe my CPU utilization using Task Manager: One thread was pinned at 100% and the rest were humming along a bit above idle.

That is no longer the case. I'm just doing an approach to KIAD with the default scenery, ORBX Global and Vector, and ChasePlane. I'm running an i7-7700K lightly overclocked at 4.6 GHz, and a GTX970 GPU. Thread 1 is still pinned at 100%, but now six of the remaining seven hyperthreads are running at utilization levels well in excess of 50%, with the overall CPU utilization around 75%. Task Manager indicates that virtually all of that is P3D. The GPU utilization is around 50%.

LM has done more with v4 than convert to 64 bit architecture. This seems to be a very different creature than was v2.5, my earlier installation. Those individuals waiting on the fence or elsewhere might want to take a very close look at v4. I don't have access to the source code of either P3D v4 or XP11 and doubt that I could understand them anyway, but both of these products now seem able to take effective advantage of modern computer architectures.

 

[AndyUK 26]

On ‎10‎/‎08‎/‎2017 at 1:44 PM, Glynn said:

...... P3D has everything FSX ever had, plus it's much further advanced.

It's also many times more expensive than FSX:SE unless you qualify for the Academic license or are prepared to cheat.  Perhaps when LM start enforcing their licensing conditions the balance will tilt more in favour of the other 64-bit sims out there.

[Glynn 405]

1 hour ago, AndyUK said:

It's also many times more expensive than FSX:SE unless you qualify for the Academic license or are prepared to cheat.

Did you ever go for a pint before you were 18 Andy ?