PSD and FSX sold separately???

[RobertO1035 0]

In a community where add-ons are sold with the compatibility for both P3D and FSX at one price, am I to understand that after spending $89 for the 747V2 for FSX, I am now supposed to pay and additional $139 for the P3D version?????

Rob Olson

[Ron Attwood 3,465]

Put your tin hat on Rob. Stuff will be coming atcha.

[scandinavian13 5,192]

12 minutes ago, RobertO1035 said:

In a community where add-ons are sold with the compatibility for both P3D and FSX at one price, am I to understand that after spending $89 for the 747V2 for FSX, I am now supposed to pay and additional $139 for the P3D version?????

 

[Chock 17,769]

PMDG FSX and P3D aeroplane add-ons may look like the same product, and in many respects they bear many similarities, but not all respects, so it's not quite as simple as it might seem. Every day which goes by sees FSX and P3D diverge further apart from one another in terms of how they function and what can be done with them, were that not the case, the P3D V4 version of PMDG's products would have been available within a matter of days, and we know that was not the case.

This was not PMDG sitting there pretending they had to tweak stuff to make things P3D V4 compatible, it was because there was much which needed to be done to make that so when one platform is a matter of a few weeks old and the other one is essentially eleven years old and even in its FSX-SE incarnation, is two or three years old. That said, since P3D and FSX are both based on the ESP platform, difficulties with compatibility differences might not have been the case with some simpler add-ons you have seen which were sold as multi-platform compatible, where it was simply a case of developers tweaking their GUIs on their installers to include a P3D install location tick box. This is why the very first products you saw going on sale listed as compatible with P3D V4 were the less flashy add-ons, such as for example, the Virtualcol CRJ. This is not to take away from what that Virtualcol product offers, but it is unashamedly a cheap and cheerful aeroplane add-on roughly on par with default FSX aircraft, so it was obviously a lot less complex a conversion task to make its FSX incarnation work in the latest version of P3D, but even that took a few weeks of tweaking before it showed up.

So that ought to tell you something about the work necessary to get something like a fancy 747 or 737 NG working on P3D V4. Consider for example, the iFly 737 NG, which became P3D V4 compatible a few weeks ago, and the PMDG 737 NG, which became P3D V4 compatible a couple of weeks after it, both were being worked on to get them P3D V4 ready, and the timeframe was similar - i.e. many weeks of work - so you know plenty of work was involved to make that happen for both products which depict a complex Boeing airliner. Certainly a lot more than merely tweaking an installer so it would point at P3D V4.

And that's not even the end of the matter, there is also the licensing to consider; FSX is marketed as a game, P3D is not, and so the licensing costs to the developers differ as much as what can be done in the two platforms. All of the aforementioned work in making a product work on a different platform and the more complex licensing is what has to be paid for. Companies such as Boeing do not hand out that Officially Licensed Product title to anyone who simply asks them for it, it costs money, and Boeing's lawyers are unlikely to consider the P3D and FSX versions as the same product.

Sure it would be great if we could get that for free, but developers such as PMDG employ large numbers of sub contracted freelancers and such around the world to make all the bits which combine to become one of their add-ons, and it simply is not realistic to imagine that all those people would do all the additional work necessary for free just to make PMDG look generous. PMDG are after all, a business, and they have to cover the cost of employing all the people who make that stuff. If it was easy or free for them to make all that happen, clearly they would not charge for it, as it would engender good will, but they are quite simply not in a financial position to be able to do that.

I'm sure everyone I'm training on Photoshop this week would think I was lovely if I didn't charge them for it, but I can't get by on merely having people think I'm lovely, I've gotta eat lol.

[Ron Attwood 3,465]

See?

[Nighthwk 566]

1 hour ago, RobertO1035 said:

In a community where add-ons are sold with the compatibility for both P3D and FSX at one price, am I to understand that after spending $89 for the 747V2 for FSX, I am now supposed to pay and additional $139 for the P3D version?????

Rob Olson

I wouldn't go screaming at a dev, on their own forum, accusing them of simply rebranding the product as "P3D Compatible" when you have no idea what is really going on behind the scenes. If you don't like the price, then don't pay it. Nobody here is holding a gun to your head demanding that you buy the P3D versions.

[mwilk 1,106]

2 hours ago, Chock said:

I can't get by on merely having people think I'm lovely, I've gotta eat lol.

Chock,

              You'll just have to get by with everyone on Avsim thinking you're lovely!