What's going on with FSW?

[carbonbasedlifeform 179]

Let's not answer bias with mudslinging. Froogle has criticized products other than FSW. I doubt it's about advertising because he says if he was sent a product. As someone pointed out, he's basically stuck in the P3D or X-plane mode that most of the community is in at the moment.

Good for him for being willing to change his mind.

[Skywolf 992]

I dunno about FSW, I got this sim for $7 during the Christmas Sale.  The sim needs addons, Dovetail can open the sim up completely and allow FSX/P3Dv4 (64bit) compatible sceneries and addons in it and that alone will bring everyone into the fold in one shot.  And then they can worry about their own store for addons.  It is enchanced FSX technically (different variant for P3Dv4)...probably could be better but if the masses don't move in; then it just sits out there and collects dust.  This all my opinion anyway.

[pracines 823]

3 hours ago, Rimshot said:

Just now I read on Simflight.nl version 1 will be released at the end of this month. I haven't seen an official statement about this though. Any comments Cryss?

http://www.simflight.nl/2018/01/13/dtg-fsw-bijna-gereed/

If FSW version 1 gets released from early access before February or even November (at this rate), it will die faster than MS Flight and Flight School. A flight sim world record of failure and a huge waste of time would be on the books.

The 100 or so die hard fans of FSW are basing their loyalty on: "its early access"....talk about...well.... a kick in the teeth.

I will remain in belief of Steven Hood that he will make sure that this is the "go to" sim before it gets out of early access. 

I suppose there is a slight chance that there will be a 1 terabyte update to totally transform FSW by the end of January.lol

[torium 207]

1 hour ago, Skywolf said:

The sim needs addons, Dovetail can open the sim up completely and allow FSX/P3Dv4 (64bit) compatible sceneries and addons in it and that alone will bring everyone into the fold in one shot.

Do you suggest that we should buy old technology for FSW - or that FSW should be adapted to old technology?

[torium 207]

6 minutes ago, pracines said:

I will remain in belief of Steven Hood that he will make sure that this is the "go to" sim before it gets out of early access. 

When has Steven Hood said FSW will be the "go to" sim before it gets out of early access? It sounds strange.

[Skywolf 992]

13 minutes ago, torium said:

Do you suggest that we should buy old technology for FSW - or that FSW should be adapted to old technology?

I looked all the files of FSW, it is very similar structure to FSX....I even managed to install some FSX/P3Dv4 addons into it, but they did some major modifications to prevent menu tab to show up etc.  From what I can tell Dovetail relies of people buying virtual items (anything) from their store.  It is obvious they bought rights from MS to have their own sim so that they could sell whatever addon comes in their store.  It is the Gillette Blade Handle and Razor model.  Give the handle for cheap and charge on Razors.  

 

I don't have any problems buying from their store but they need to get major players in on it - Orbx, PMDG, A2A, Majestic etc.  I am not spending any money on any third party on Dovetail's store which can not provide me what these major high fidelity sim companies provide.

I know Dovetail is banking on customers to come to their store, best way to move forward is to get the major developers in and then build the Sim Store around it.

Dovetail made Train sim, they were the only game in town for that...but for flightsim you are competing with Prepar3d, X-plane-11 and now Aerofly FS2 and good ole FSX-SE lol.

FSW has so much potential it is not even funny, but without players it has no value.  It is like this - if you make an awesome product (thinking like an engineer), and one can not get marketters/sellers on board, then the product is not gonna sell at all.

 

Look at Porsche - they have one heck of engineering team, but their marketing team does one heck of a job, people are willing to big bucks just to get custom paint...it is how they sell their cars is what makes keep coming back year after year.

 

[theohall65 64]

One thing I can say - having attempted to use the "free" version of the FSX ME recently,  DTG including the full version of the PME for free has been a joy to use.  Anyone remember having to use a separate model viewer to place objects in FSX?  Well, Ctrl-M opens a model viewer in the FSW PME.  You can search the entire library by typing in what you are looking for in the empty box at the top and it will search for whatever you type in all of the object names and display just those items.  Then just drag the item you want from the model viewer onto the World Map, all within the PME, and the object is placed.  Super simple.  LearJet777 and I have used it extensively for placing things in that Apples mission we opened to Friends for testing.

So I'm happy with what's in early access and really looking forward to future improvements, including the BizJet and functional IFR.

[torium 207]

8 minutes ago, Skywolf said:

Dovetail made Train sim, they were the only game in town for that...but for flightsim you are competing with Prepar3d, X-plane-11 and now Aerofly FS2 and good ole FSX-SE lol.

As a manufacturer: How many stores would you prefer to deliver your goods to? 1 or 2?

[theohall65 64]

FSX-SE isn't a serious competitor in my book.  Sure, it has more planes and stuff, but the base scenery isn't even close compared to FSW's base scenery.  Didn't spend money on FSX-SE stuff, because I didn't have the time or PC to use it for years.  By the time I did, FSW has come out.  So why should I spend more dineros on those other things (X-Plane, P3D, Aerofly FS2, FSX-SE), and I'm talking significantly more dineros, to get a comparable experience to what FSW already provides.

This is part of the argument that drives me nuts.  Folks bring up the other things, but don't tell you how much it will cost to get comparable, whole world, scenery coverage for those other sims.  Or even how much more those base sims cost.  ($100 with 2 scenery packs for Aerofly and the world still isn't covered) Or how much it costs to improve the FSX-SE scenery and that's still not close to the base FSW scenery.  Or the flat paneled cockpits in FSX-SE that kill immersion when switching views - which doesn't happen in FSW.  I should post a video of what default FSX-SE Cessna views do compared to the same views in the Cherokee 180.

[pracines 823]

23 minutes ago, torium said:

When has Steven Hood said FSW will be the "go to" sim before it gets out of early access? It sounds strange.

How can it be considered a go to sim if its released before its the go to sim?

Thinking about it, why release out of EA if it does not exceed every feature (go to sim) of all other sims. Well, one reason is to push responsibility of them features onto 3rd parties, and that is fine, but then Steven Hood would be speaking in the place of countless other companies, and he is not qualified to do such a thing. I believe he is smarter than that. I cant think of another good reason to release in a couple weeks, unless there is a serious "1 TB" update, but this is very unlikely.

So DTG is responsible for making FSW the "go to" sim, and if they release FSW before February, it cannot be the go to sim, nor will it even have the potential, there is still way too much to be done. The other flight sim companies are working too.

The project seems to be losing steam.....pardon the pun. 

[theohall65 64]

35 minutes ago, pracines said:

The project seems to be losing steam.....pardon the pun. 

Completely disagree with that sentiment.

Biz jet coming soon along with full IFR implementation when that jet is released.

Plus whatever other stuff they keep hinting about.

Plus whatever folks come up with as the SDK is flushed out, especially if they add Blender support.

Plus whatever bigger 3rd party devs continue to create.

Plenty of steam from where I'm sitting.

[pracines 823]

20 minutes ago, theohall65 said:

FSX-SE isn't a serious competitor in my book.  Sure, it has more planes and stuff, but the base scenery isn't even close compared to FSW's base scenery.  Didn't spend money on FSX-SE stuff, because I didn't have the time or PC to use it for years.  By the time I did, FSW has come out.  So why should I spend more dineros on those other things (X-Plane, P3D, Aerofly FS2, FSX-SE), and I'm talking significantly more dineros, to get a comparable experience to what FSW already provides.

This is part of the argument that drives me nuts.  Folks bring up the other things, but don't tell you how much it will cost to get comparable, whole world, scenery coverage for those other sims.  Or even how much more those base sims cost.  ($100 with 2 scenery packs for Aerofly and the world still isn't covered) Or how much it costs to improve the FSX-SE scenery and that's still not close to the base FSW scenery.  Or the flat paneled cockpits in FSX-SE that kill immersion when switching views - which doesn't happen in FSW.  I should post a video of what default FSX-SE Cessna views do compared to the same views in the Cherokee 180.

Every sim has its strong/weak points.

From the start, flight sim was a tiny 2 airfield fictional area. It has become a full world choice between several strengths. For example, with FS9/FSX-SE/P3D its a greater choice of the best add-ons. with AeroFly 2 its VR, with X-Plane its UI and ortho4XP. With FSW its stock GA planes and missions so far....still a long way to go before it catches up to its cousins. 

So as it stands right now, what simulator can you do it all with, none. But what sim has the potential to do most, P3Dv4. No matter what kind of flying you do, if you want to come as close to reality as possible in a flight sim P3Dv4 is the best choice. Not the cheapest but the most potential for realism. I think the Xplane 11 is coming along, but one pays a whole lot more for a whole lot less in the realm of add-ons.....for example weather add-ons!

I have them all, but its with P3Dv4 that I do my serious flight training/simming with, the rest I dabble with, waiting for them to fully impress me.

FSW may end up being the go to sim, but its no good to anybody if it dies like Flight School and MS Flight did.     

[theohall65 64]

Price matters....  I don't have hundreds and hundreds to spend on P3D....

FSW is what?  $30 and could be had for as low as $7 during the Steam Holiday sale.

Parsing every little word, like "go to sim" is a little ridiculous.

[flyforever 267]

several years ago,everyone was bemoaning the death of the only flight sim, with MS having dropped FSX and MS Flight.

Today, we're arguing about so many sims.

I call this progress.

[pracines 823]

Just now, theohall65 said:

Completely disagree with that sentiment.

Biz jet coming soon along with full IFR implementation when that jet is released.

Plus whatever other stuff they keep hinting about.

Plus whatever folks come up with as the SDK is flushed out, especially if they add Blender support.

Plus whatever bigger 3rd party devs continue to create.

Plenty of steam from where I'm sitting.

Remember, there was a lot of "steam" for Flight School too. They plainly said it was geared for beginners and that it was not going to be open to add-ons, so where is it? Is there no longer such thing as beginners in flight sims? The future was not thought though thoroughly, and a waste of effort/time/money was the result.

Yes Flight School was incorporated into FSW, but that resulted in so many people getting FSW for free and that could not have been the original plan. This was a reaction to the rejection of Flight School and the same is happening to FSW, except this time its getting very expensive to react to the rejection of FSW and I'm not sure the board of directors at DTG has that much of a heart for this competition, but of course we give Steven Hood all the time he needs to make FSW the go to sim.

There will never be enough FSW hype, tee shirts, or hats to be able to help this project.