Maybe I missunderstood you, If so I apologise for that. However if the person's status as a Betas tester or not is not relevant why did you highlight it.

When I said I filter, I did not say I ignore.  When I see one of your beautiful videos I enjoy it as a piece of art showing a product at its best.  I however do not think that the aircraft is perfect and enjoy the videos which do show the aircraft with it's good and its faults and possibly make a buying decision more than on your wonderful videos.

 

20 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

Why buy a simulation engine (ESP) if you are going to completely re-write/re-work the engine?  That would be a waste of money.

Would it not be better if outdated data was updated.  The earths magnetic field moves and this wonderful planet of ours is updated all the time, surely it is not re-writing the engine.  It is adjusting the data in the engine. Surely LM can do this.  Tuning for errors is also a process that should be ongoing and should be performed by LM.

 

Guys these "flight simulators" we play on are just a game.  There is nothing in them that correlates to my real world flying.  I will not be able to skip my week of recurrent training because I have been practicing on my desktop flight simulator.  

Some of the current flight simulator games that are available to the public are very good when compared to some of the FFS Level-ds I've known though out the years.  As I look back at those FFS I am truly amazed that I can buy for under $200 a flight simulator game that is even close to that level of fidelity. 

Grace and Peace,

blaustern

 

 

 

Any flight simulator is a game - even a Level-D one. You play a game to simulate and learn things that are difficult to act out in real life because of cost and risk.

Wanting P3D to be as good as it can get and as real as it can get is only a good thing - for the gamers and the professionals that use the platform. If LM had zero interest in "gamers" using their simulator platform there would be no selling of academic or "semi-professional" licenses, there would be no public forum, no public SDK, and I doubt the recent graphics improvements would have gotten much attention either.

The cynical and speculative view that LM don't give a damn and are only ruled by economics is true for any maker of software - flight sims or not. People have to eat - even flight sim develoeprs. I don't regard LM any more cynical than Aerosoft, Carenado or PMDG. In fact, I think it is a better chance of LM sticking with development even if they make no money from it than for most other firms - simply becasue they can afford to.

Lets hope Jan's contributions are taken into consideration. Always nice to have a professional pilot give his 2 cents, as opposed to all the specualtion and flat out wrong assumptions made by many ohters in these forums with little or no experience flying real aircraft.

Just to add to the original list, the ridiculous, long inherited "leaning bug", where miraculously the reciprocating engine are modeled in such a way that above, say, 3000', as you lean the mixture, the fuel flow actually increases initially...

as much as I understand the initial list, I don't know if it helps at all other than taking away the fun from simming. Given the age of the platform, we all know substantial changes of the core won't happen.

And it's certainly not only P3D. Take the twitchy elevator sensitivity in Xplane, makes me always wonder if the developers have ever spend at least an hour in a real plane or FFS.

Anyway, FS / P3D / Xplane have always been just a sort of basic "operating system" and you make a simulation out of it by buying Addons. I started simming back in 1985 with FS2, saw the first Addons arrive in FS95. And did not even dream about current Addons like the Majestic Dash-8 of FSLabs A320.

Just a matter of attitude and viewing angle to enjoy or not to enjoy what we have.

Mike

Folks,

In my humble opinion, If we understand the challenges all LM software engineers had to face since day one you will realise that Lockheed Martin has done a wonderful and remarkable Job since it acquired the ESP Engine back in 2009 (that is right almost 9 years ago), despite all these challenges and difficulties LM has managed to update the ESP engine, move our flying simulation platform forward and keep the P3D platform compatible with FSX Add-on's / developers, this is one of their most remarkable and beneficial achievements for all of us as Developers and flying sim users (which is a category I also belong to), which is a hard proof on itself about how much LM care about the flying sim community users and also their 3rd party developers.

Can it be improved? yes it can, can your wish list be done? yes it can, and indeed LM software engineers are working right now very hard to provide all 3rd party developers with the required tools so we can continue supporting our current add-on's, but most important they are also providing new SDK functions as we speak so we can develop much powerful and wonderful add-on's in the future.

What you must realise is that LM has been extremely careful (and kind as they could have opted not to do so) to avoid breaking or interrupting the current platform back end engine functionality and compatibility, this is absolutely crucial in order to avoid destroying most add-on's functionality with each new versions release and such approach is what has allowed this community to continue growing and for many 3rd developers to continue supporting their tools.

I have been a software engineer and network administrator for over 22 years, and I must tell you I haven't seen such care and collaboration towards 3rd party developers in the industry, most platform vendors just switch technologies over time without providing any backward compatibility so all 3rd party developers have to adapt or go out of business in a very short period of time, and most of the time the end result is 3rd party developers just doing the last!.

If LM decided to adopt the same approach most of 3rd party developers would not be here with you today, which for obvious reasons would be a disaster for all of us.

Conclusion

What I am trying to say is, although you might not notice it LM is actually moving, evolving and making the platform much more powerful and stronger every day, these changes are being provided slowly with each P3D release in order to allow 3rd party developers to adapt and move with the platform as smooth as posible.

This doesn't mean all 3rd party providers are able to move fast enough with the platform, and on such circumstances you will continue to see these old behaviours with airplanes, weather engines, airports, etc. this is for your benefit believe or not, eventually competition and user demand will force eventually all 3rd party developers to implement new functionality already available under the P3D SDK  and as a result you will start seeing elements of your wish list becoming a reality.

LM is providing the required platform power so these changes become posible, for this developers need to adapt but adaptation takes time and effort, I find it amazing that LM is able to understand this and it is providing the required support to do so, so changes are coming but these will be more evident when 3rd party content providers are ready to implement them, think about species evolution, if the environment changes too fast species disappear and go extinct as they cannot adapt, if the environment don't change species do not evolve, the perfect formula for evolution is slow changes that allow species to adapt, making them better and fully synchronised with their new environment.

This is how Lockheed Martin is working, it introduces changes at a reasonable speed so we can evolve with the platform without destroying everything during the process.

Best Regards,
Simbol

 

 

 

Simbol-

BZ!

C

 

PS- most of us forget their collective stapler budget is larger than the GNP of several nations.  In our collective self-absorption, we forget our collective purchasing power (to them) is as large as the puss on a pimple on a gnat's posterior.

37 minutes ago, simbol said:

This is how Lockheed Martin is working, it introduces changes at a reasonable speed so we can evolve with the platform without destroying everything during the process.

Are you saying that LM could fix all the bugs and introduce all the missing features now if they wanted to, but opt not to? If so, what is your opinion based on?

1 minute ago, vortex681 said:

Are you saying that LM could fix all the bugs and introduce all the missing features now if they wanted to, but opt not to? If so, what is your opinion based on?

I am not saying anything like that, I am saying they are changing the platform at a reasonable speed so we can evolve with the platform which is better than performing lots of big changes and render every single add-on available for P3D un-usable.

Reagrds,

Simbol

3 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

Are you saying that LM could fix all the bugs and introduce all the missing features now if they wanted to, but opt not to? If so, what is your opinion based on?

The way I read his response, they can and are but are staggering them throughout upcoming versions as to not totally change the sim and break compatablility with loads of addons.

9 hours ago, Bluestar said:

Guys these "flight simulators" we play on are just a game.  There is nothing in them that correlates to my real world flying. 

I disagree.  You wouldn't be 'playing' them otherwise.  It also depends what kind of flying you do in your sim.

FS98 was gamey.  A vanilla P3D is gamey. 

P4Dv4, stuffed with Tier 1 aircraft add-on's is a very different ball game.  Of course it isn't real, but there is a very strong correlation in visual cues, sounds, interactive logic, and operation of the systems which mimic their real world counterparts.  If you are half decent at operating a simulated aircraft properly, the correlation is significant.  There is a reason why some of the software packages we are familiar with also have commercial applications.  It is quite amazing how far PC tech has evolved to bridge the gap.

Of course you lack the feel, the sensation, actual stress - not to even mention people's varying degrees of hardware setups.  But if you had enough money, you could install yourself a Level D sim using exactly the same software as everyone of us use.  How's the correlation then?

I'm the first in the queue to slap down anyone who thinks he can fly an aircraft because he can fly his pixelated aircraft,  but equally bearish on this who claim that no-one with a desktop sim can possibly correlate the experience with their real world flying.   It''s all about context.

It is my understanding that ESP was primarilly meant to become a "World Simulator", instead of a Flight Simulator.

This facet was used by companies who seel their trining simulators, ELITE being a good example, and give their customers an option to use ESP, now P3D, for the Visuals, with the simulation being completely run separately by their own engines.

Other than being a "World Simulator" with some enhanced features, and the fact it is now 64 bit, P3D offers nothing more IMO... It's still good old MSFS version X, not even MS FLIGHT...

The only thing that is good old MS Flight Simulator is good old MS Flight Simulator. FSW is not and neither is P3d.

2 hours ago, simbol said:

Folks,

In my humble opinion, If we understand the challenges all LM software engineers had to face since day one you will realise that Lockheed Martin has done a wonderful and remarkable Job since it acquired the ESP Engine back in 2009 (that is right almost 9 years ago), despite all these challenges and difficulties LM has managed to update the ESP engine, move our flying simulation platform forward and keep the P3D platform compatible with FSX Add-on's / developers, this is one of their most remarkable and beneficial achievements for all of us as Developers and flying sim users (which is a category I also belong to), which is a hard proof on itself about how much LM care about the flying sim community users and also their 3rd party developers.

Can it be improved? yes it can, can your wish list be done? yes it can, and indeed LM software engineers are working right now very hard to provide all 3rd party developers with the required tools so we can continue supporting our current add-on's, but most important they are also providing new SDK functions as we speak so we can develop much powerful and wonderful add-on's in the future.

What you must realise is that LM has been extremely careful (and kind as they could have opted not to do so) to avoid breaking or interrupting the current platform back end engine functionality and compatibility, this is absolutely crucial in order to avoid destroying most add-on's functionality with each new versions release and such approach is what has allowed this community to continue growing and for many 3rd developers to continue supporting their tools.

I have been a software engineer and network administrator for over 22 years, and I must tell you I haven't seen such care and collaboration towards 3rd party developers in the industry, most platform vendors just switch technologies over time without providing any backward compatibility so all 3rd party developers have to adapt or go out of business in a very short period of time, and most of the time the end result is 3rd party developers just doing the last!.

If LM decided to adopt the same approach most of 3rd party developers would not be here with you today, which for obvious reasons would be a disaster for all of us.

Conclusion

What I am trying to say is, although you might not notice it LM is actually moving, evolving and making the platform much more powerful and stronger every day, these changes are being provided slowly with each P3D release in order to allow 3rd party developers to adapt and move with the platform as smooth as posible.

This doesn't mean all 3rd party providers are able to move fast enough with the platform, and on such circumstances you will continue to see these old behaviours with airplanes, weather engines, airports, etc. this is for your benefit believe or not, eventually competition and user demand will force eventually all 3rd party developers to implement new functionality already available under the P3D SDK  and as a result you will start seeing elements of your wish list becoming a reality.

LM is providing the required platform power so these changes become posible, for this developers need to adapt but adaptation takes time and effort, I find it amazing that LM is able to understand this and it is providing the required support to do so, so changes are coming but these will be more evident when 3rd party content providers are ready to implement them, think about species evolution, if the environment changes too fast species disappear and go extinct as they cannot adapt, if the environment don't change species do not evolve, the perfect formula for evolution is slow changes that allow species to adapt, making them better and fully synchronised with their new environment.

This is how Lockheed Martin is working, it introduces changes at a reasonable speed so we can evolve with the platform without destroying everything during the process.

Best Regards,
Simbol

 

 

 

All nice said but in my opinion it's reasonable to think more should have happened in the last almost 10 years.

Sure, there's been a number of great improvements over the years but again...I don't see an improvement worth 10 years of continuous development.

2 hours ago, simbol said:

I am not saying anything like that, I am saying they are changing the platform at a reasonable speed so we can evolve with the platform which is better than performing lots of big changes and render every single add-on available for P3D un-usable.

As long as this backward compatibility and slow speed doesn't hold all of us back from enjoying 2018 technology meaning we'll have to wait for another 10 years to finally somewhere around 2028 have the technology that we could have had already 10 years ago with a different approach.