5 hours ago, arsenal82 said:

Yes i agree; p3d price tag is costly; but the sim is reasonable  fully functioning sim; to me there is no preference; Fsw is what is and P3d is what it is; i use all sime available out there really. Some simmer rather avoid the pain of Early access stages; and prefer to splash the $$$ to be up and running straight away because of hobby time limitations etc etc. Yes Fsw have nice ideas but still have a long way to go at the moment. 

 

I'm not here to start a sim war and your points are valid for those with the appetite for that product. I still do as well infact. 

I am just confused with the doubt in DTG after they have made such tremendous strides in such a short period of time. If they indeed release v1 this month, or even next, I'm sure it wont be a light update. After TrueSky and their PBR implementation, I have no doubt this development team will deliver something "game changing" again. 

I keep an eye on FSW, but IMO its nowhere near ready for prime time. Seems like a few more years away still measured on the basis that I have seen very very few announcements from major or even minor developers for upcoming products for FSW. Until that happens, FSW despite its potential , will be just that. Potential.  And even then , there basically has to be a whopping influx of what we use in our fav sims available nearly same time. If PMDG were to release your fav aircraft for FSW whos going to really fly it and adopt it as their sim if there is no detailed airports, ATC,AI,Vatsim,Moving maps, Charts and navdata, your VA airlines clients, etc etc. Its going to take alot for devs to move time and resources for FSW when they have a developed mature sim bringing in money in P3D,XP11, and AE FS2.   Unless theres some relatively quick way to convert stuff over, I just dont see it happening anytime soon. But im sure DTG knew that and are prepared for the long term growing pains. 

I can't understand the statement that "P3D is a fully functioning sim" when comparing it to FSW. I'd love to see actual evidence in this regard, because I can't see it. P3D requires lots of addons before most here would even consider it a decent sim. e.g. A cloud and weather system, a camera system, a tweaking tool, scenery, aircraft, ground textures ..... the list goes on and on.... FSW out of the box is just as functional (even more so) than P3D, and yet people still complain about it. There is no other excuse here for this other than sim-zealotism . Comparing a sim with probably thousands of dollars of extra addons to a $19.99 default sim is just crazy and I'm amazed people can even bring this up or take it seriously. I have P3D+Addons and it's a great sim, but I'd never use the default/vanilla sim.

Regarding the DLC that Dovetail games is famous for, I fail to see how this is actually any different than what we've already had for years in our other sims. We fork out large piles of money to add even basic functionality to our sims (e.g. A camera or cloud textures). The distribution method may have changed to Steam instead of various stores, but for consumers this is a benefit since all addons will be in one place and kept up-to-date.

I'm almost certain we'll see more addons for FSW. The SDK hasn't been out long and still lacks functionality (but it will get there). It might not be PMDG or A2A, but just as in X-Plane, someone else will come along and fill in gap. I have a little more faith in DTG moving the ESP platform forward than LM, and here are a few or my "personal" reasons:

• They are a UK gaming company and not a US Military company.
• The developers and PR folk are more approachable, engage with users and even run video streams. I really like their enthusiasm and you can see that they really want to make this sim work.
• The price, I got it for $19.99 and haven't paid for any more addons for it yet (I haven't needed to)
• The default planes are fantastic.
• TruSky
• It's fun. The missions are great to try. This one shouldn't be underestimated, it has a big potential to attract new users to the genre.

On the other side of the coin, there are some things I don't like too much:

• Lack of VR. This might come back and bite them if they don't add it soon, but I don't believe that the ESP engine can handle it. The king here is AeroflyFS, which is fantastic.
• Some of the gamey features are a bit too much (e.g. You won't earn any points if you don't land). I can understand having them for missions, but for free flight I'd hope this can be turned off eventually.
• Still no decent built-in camera system, e.g. A way to save views for each plane, etc..
• Multiplayer, I couldn't see a way to do this, but maybe I'm missing it.

 

 

 

 

For me, FSW offers the simmers, specially those that didn't spend fortunes in add-ons and are now tied to that burden, the very best option for someone wanting to invest on a general flight simulation platform, with great perspective of becoming a standard in a couple of years, even more than AEFS2 or X-plane...

- Why?  Well. from even the base install ( which sells for a really low price compared to the other available options ) one has a much more complete World scenery ( airfields and navaids ), a very good set of GA, a much more nice looking weather rendering. And it's 64 bit as required these days...

Then, I see 3pds which have grown in reputation creating for FSX and P3D ( A2A, FSLabs, PMDG, Carenado, and others... ) more easily trying their port into FSW than into X-Plane ( which is to be honest a much more unstable platform for development since it keeps changing and braking backward compatibility quite often, at least in as far as aircraft flight and overall physics modeling goes... ) or AEFS2 which certainly requires a much bigger investment in order to be able to start producing valuable / profitable offers...

So, IMO, FSW is probably the best positioned platform for the next years... 

2 hours ago, jcomm said:

For me, FSW offers the simmers, specially those that didn't spend fortunes in add-ons and are now tied to that burden, the very best option for someone wanting to invest on a general flight simulation platform, with great perspective of becoming a standard in a couple of years, even more than AEFS2 or X-plane...

- Why?  Well. from even the base install ( which sells for a really low price compared to the other available options ) one has a much more complete World scenery ( airfields and navaids ), a very good set of GA, a much more nice looking weather rendering. And it's 64 bit as required these days...

Then, I see 3pds which have grown in reputation creating for FSX and P3D ( A2A, FSLabs, PMDG, Carenado, and others... ) more easily trying their port into FSW than into X-Plane ( which is to be honest a much more unstable platform for development since it keeps changing and braking backward compatibility quite often, at least in as far as aircraft flight and overall physics modeling goes... ) or AEFS2 which certainly requires a much bigger investment in order to be able to start producing valuable / profitable offers...

So, IMO, FSW is probably the best positioned platform for the next years... 

XP11 offers so much in its vanilla state. Very usable default planes, a very comprehensive GNS and G1000 simulation, great looking scenery for the whole planet, superior lighting and graphics, extremely good performance, very believable flight modeling, and you can increase the simulation depth of aircraft and the look of scenery without any cost! The freeware offerings are impressive. FSW has some neat things, but I have to disagree, for someone who starts today with civilian flight simming, and she or he is totally unbiased, XP is the way to go! Just my opinion...

3 hours ago, tonywob said:

I have a little more faith in DTG moving the ESP platform forward than LM

This is the key. When I bought FSW on sale last year, I didn't buy it to use now. P3D and AFS2 keep me very happy. I bought it because I believe so much in its future. What they have done so far is great. I too have more hope in DTG moving the ESP platform forward than LM for similar reasons. 

The past half year things have been a little silent though in regards to FSW. It also doesn't help that third-party developers are barely talking about supporting it but yet are increasingly embracing other flight sims. But we'll have to wait and see with this "January update", and what the rest of this year will bring. I still hold hope for this platform. Something needs to replace P3D. We can't keep relying on Lockheed Martin who have more interests in the military than us home simmers.

I agree with Tony, I think FSW could take the place of P3D, even if most P3Der's would find it laughable today (as we also see in threads like these).

And ironically, even if FSW was born as a GA-oriented sim, IMO it has a better chance than XP to become the platform for airliner flying. Being a descendant of FSX, I presume they have the code to manage AI+ATC with the same capabilities of FSX (whereas XP is still lacking in these areas), and even the rest of aircrafts/addons design is certainly more similar to FSX/P3D than to XP, hence 3rd parties will be able to port their aircrafts/addons more easily.

But these are only hypotheses, everything and the opposite could happen, it will depend on how DTG, LR and LM will improve their respective products.

 

1 hour ago, Asheroo said:

It also doesn't help that third-party developers are barely talking about supporting it but yet are increasingly embracing other flight sims.

If I was a 3rd party developer and believed that FSW would be the future "go to" sim, I guess I had focused on producing my product for FSX / P3D while they are still popular. When the market (P3D / FSX) was saturated with my products, I would turn production into a new market: FSW. (This depends on what competitors are doing).
Perhaps this is one of the reasons why 3rd party developers apparently sit on the fence? (FSW = the 3rd party developers future sales, revenue and earnings).

2 hours ago, Asheroo said:

Something needs to replace P3D. We can't keep relying on Lockheed Martin who have more interests in the military than us home simmers.

Agree. That's also a good reason.

Within this early release state, FSW has introduced…

• Great default aircraft
• Missions & Tutorials…Cold and Dark
• Great Weather enhancements (Rain + TrueSky)
• Passengers (Yes, I like passengers and the idea of a passenger view…like in their train sim)
• The above alone lets me know that DTG is serious about offering something new / exciting / unique.

I really don’t care about a January update, or a February update. I just hope that DTG has the resources ( money, staff etc) to put out the best sim within the next year or so.

I realize that “new” implementations take time to do it right, especially if you have a small DEV team. If DTG needs to get some DLC sales in the meantime to further fund this project, then so be it. And I expect that their SDK will attract third party Devs to create awesome addons.

So…I look to the middle or end of 2019 to truly measure what DTG is capable of doing. No rush here. I purchased X-plane in 2011 and Prepar3d shortly after that, and neither of these sims made any major groundbreaking advances since then when compared to what DTG has been able to do in just their early release stage. So i can wait another year or so to give DTG the required time to create the best flight sim experience.

I personally feel a debt of gratitude and loyalty to Steam for taking a  buggy FSX  and making some good improvements and selling it to us at a very good price. FSW is almost free if you consider it comes with FTX Global and the Crenado Baron unless I'm mistaken. They are much more open to us flight sim hobbyist then the multibillion dollar defense contractor and I believe are more deserving of our loyalty and hope FSW grows into something great as well as profitable. May their tribe increase and their borders expand.

Lockheed treats us like they do Uncle Sam by digging deep into the pockets. Unfortunately, I don't have a tax base to go back to and I can't print money.  

I think we just need patience. Look at all the time the other simulators took. Granted, they bought the base, but they are a small team. Let's give them time. Haters will hate and they always will..... This was an awesome update. They took away my GPS in the Cherokee so I have to fly old school, kudos. No more magenta line, I was getting lazy, lol...

10 hours ago, PATCO LCH said:

I personally feel a debt of gratitude and loyalty to Steam

Remember don't confuse steam and DTG. Steam is just the shop.

You are right though DTG are doing a great thing for flight sim and it will become the p3d replacement as Devs move over.

Chris

21 hours ago, Asheroo said:

Something needs to replace P3D. We can't keep relying on Lockheed Martin who have more interests in the military than us home simmers.

You mean like the Royal Air Force that used MS ESP in their simulators and now are converting to P3D. Oh, and you can use the very same simulator on your home desk top. Isn't that good enough?

Personally, I haven’t upgraded to v4 of P3D yet. And I doubt I will. The pricing of the sim and the „high end“ addons, the upgrade fees for stuff I’ve already bought, and the relatively small differences that the jump from one major update to the other brings (P3D v2 to v3 to v4, and they all still look like FSX on steroids), brought me to the decision, that I‘ll continue using P3Dv3, but without investing more money into addons for this platform. 

FSW is ESP based as well, and while the team puts a lot of effort into breaking the limits of the old code (like making it 64bit, integrating trueSky, Accufeel, etc), we still see performance issues, limited graphics engine, etc. I’ll keep a close eye on the further development of FSW for sure. DTG seem to be pretty passionate about the further development, and that alone should/could be worth supporting them by buying the sim and DLC. 

My main sim platform is XP, and it’s expensive enough to buy new releases for one platform. But not buying stuff for P3D anymore will definitely free up some monetary resources! ;-) Flight simming has a bright future ahead! 

1 hour ago, Mik75 said:

FSW is ESP based as well, and while the team puts a lot of effort into breaking the limits of the old code (like making it 64bit, integrating trueSky, Accufeel, etc), we still see performance issues, limited graphics engine, etc. I’ll keep a close eye on the further development of FSW for sure. DTG seem to be pretty passionate about the further development, and that alone should/could be worth supporting them by buying the sim and DLC.

I'm certainly no expert when it comes to code, but isn't it fair to say that X-Plane/AFS (to my knowledge) is the only flight sim that created their own code from scratch? Look how amazing that sim is out the box, whereas DT and LM are using decades old code from someone else.

Don't misunderstand, DT and LM made some impressive strides in creating a sim out of the old ESP code base and I enjoy them both. With such talent and knowledge, I wonder if the idea had occurred to any of them to create something without those limitations. LM certainly has the resources ...

NGiS (Next Generation Interactive Software) tried that and folded pretty fast, no support and probably no funding. I realize such a monumental task isn't easy, but the resources that are available today vs. 10 or 20 years ago might make such a thing possible in a shorter amount of time.

-my 2 cents.