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Sticky

The State of Flight Simming

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I read the postings with interest.

First of all, yes, there are those that want all the bells, buttons & whistles, BUT....for many, Boeings & 'bus's do not a sim make!

There are actually some of us that actually do not have any PMDG products. This most certainly does not make us lessor simmers than those that do.

We have, as it has been said, many choices, & a forgotten & overlooked sim is FlightGear. & it's free & actually quite good.

Please do not forget FS2004. It's about 14 years old & still there are amazing add-ons being developed. Have a look at Nigel's Avro's that are in development, Milton & team's planes, the late Garry Smith's sloping ramps & circular runways.. all freeware.

Guys, yes, there are still many of us that regard our simming to be a mix of fact, fun & fiction. Sometimes, we do not need the realism, it's the immersion that keeps us going.

& yes, there are even some of us that enjoy driving around or sailing within our sim world!

So, just because we do not always or ever fly by the numbers, we are all in the same boat (as it were)!

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Robin


"Onward & Upward" ...
To the Stars, & Beyond... 

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I think the flight sim community / industry in general is doing fine, certainly better than when MSFS was fist discontinued. The difference now is that we still have options - P3D, X-Plane and even AFS2 to some extent. When MSFS disappeared, there wasn't really anything to take its place (X-Plane wasn't nearly complete enough at the time).

FSW was already doomed from the start because they tried to create something "outside" of the established Flight Sim community and "infrastructure". I'd be more worried about the future of DTG - TSW is doing pretty poorly and Train Sim is becoming what FSX SE is, more of a relic than an actual, updated product.

I'm a bit sad that the TrueSky technology won't be used, because that was the only aspect that looked promising, IMO. Maybe LM and/or LR will overhaul their weather engines eventually. They both rely on transparent texture billboards like it's still 2002.

Edited by AdvancedFollower
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As someone who has pretty much stopped simming, the existence of so many sims was, in some ways, part of the reason I've set it aside.  I've grown tired of trying to keep up with it all.  I don't want to maintain two...or three...sims.  Maintaining P3D is difficult enough and has become worse lately with patches for add-ons scattered all over the place.  I asked myself...shoudn't P3D be improving itself where these add-ons fill in?  On the other hand X-Plane seems to be getting better but it, too, needs some add-ons to be realistic and I wouldn't buy the same scenery for two sims at full price *ever* which seems to be what the devs are asking.  It's just been too much so I dropped off to see if it would sort itself out.  I do see a need for these sims to improve so that they require less maintenance and somewhat less add-ons.

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Gregg Seipp

"A good landing is when you can walk away from the airplane.  A great landing is when you can reuse it."
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25 minutes ago, Gregg_Seipp said:

As someone who has pretty much stopped simming, the existence of so many sims was, in some ways, part of the reason I've set it aside.  I've grown tired of trying to keep up with it all.  I don't want to maintain two...or three...sims.

Me too. I spent a day off clean installing windows and P3D recently and after hours of remembering all the tweaks and such to get all my add-ons to properly work, I found myself disappointed with new batch of strange issues. Once again, I feel like I need a break from this circus. I miss the old days I think. Even though the old days as far more limited than now, I was happier with my sim.

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Come back to FS2004... No tweaking nor issues, & some great new add-ons.. Have a look at Milton & team's stuff.

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Robin


"Onward & Upward" ...
To the Stars, & Beyond... 

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Wierd, P3Dv4 is running real nice for me and I didn't have to fuss with it or do hours of tweaks.  My stuff just works.  Active Sky, REX, ChasePlane, Track-IR, GTN 750, tons of Orbx and other sceneries, and my planes all installed and work nice and easy.

Maybe ppl got used to having to fiddle lots to get it all stuffed into 32-bit FSX; it was kind of a pain to get all set up nice.

I cant think of any reason to go way back to FS2004 or to get X-Plane and then buy sceneries and planes and all for that.  Why make life more complicated than it needs to be?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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28 minutes ago, Buffy Foster said:

Wierd, P3Dv4 is running real nice for me and I didn't have to fuss with it or do hours of tweaks.  My stuff just works.  Active Sky, REX, ChasePlane, Track-IR, GTN 750, tons of Orbx and other sceneries, and my planes all installed and work nice and easy. 

True, weather and chase plane are pretty reliable. Curious though, does your REX runway light texture work? It seems that's broken in P3D4.

I have problems with GNS with freezes and such though too.

It's frustrating that we're all shoehorning all these great add-ons trying to make the perfect sim, will wanting better ATC...all at 59 FPS. 

Back to the point though, is it economically feasible for a developer to actually produce the what we want in a sim, or did FSW prove the market is just too small? 

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I see no problems with flight simulation.  AVSIM gains, on average, 900 new members a month and I'm sure the other communities are getting similar results.  There is a lot of interest and excitement around the world!!  Some of the add-ons that have been developed for the various flight simulation engines are fantastic and they are getting better and better as new techniques and/or new technology is released.  Programmers and developers, who have the expertise to develop products for flight simulation, are still making products and making money... some lots of money.  We get a few disgruntled members (out of thousands in our community) who have computers that crash occasionally or they cannot install or run their simulators/add-ons properly, and the hobby is going downhill?  I do not think so!  Lockheed Martin, Laramar Research, DoveTail, FS DreamTeam, FlightBeam, PMDG, FSCrew, HiFi, Aerosoft, FlightOne, MegaScenery, and many other excellent members of our community will continue to excite us.  There are just too many to mention here!  Developers are listening to the community and making the necessary adjustments to satisfy the flight simulation community's egos and lust for perfection.  If they are not trying to perfect their products, most will not survive.  Computers are not easy to operate and many of us are old, really old, and lack the technical expertise to understand what goes wrong when a simulator crashes or does not perform in the way they think it should perform (we have experts in the community who can help out there too!!). I get issues occasionally too and frustrated and find a solution, fix it, and continue to move on with my enjoyment and educational experiences.  What's a SID?  What's a STAR?  VOR?  ILS?  ATC Communications?  Negative thinking about our hobby and the flight simulation community is not a good thing and only brings others down to their respective level of suffering.  This is wrong and should be stopped or avoided as much as possible.  For many of us old-timers we should remember those early days when we first discovered flight simulation and became involved in the community, helping others.

The AVSIM Library, as well as the libraries at other websites, is alive and well with many members posting new and spectacular freeware add-ons everyday.   They are not ready to give up on this hobby and I appreciate every single upload!  They are truly the ones who keep the excitement going for our members!

The flight simulation community is well and will survive any attacks.  There are just too many people who are thoroughly enjoying flight simulation and getting educated on the various aspects of flight for it to ever fail.  Flight Simulation is alive and well!!

Respectfully,

Jim

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18 hours ago, Sticky said:

I appreciate the discussion.  My two cents are a mixture of all the opinions express above basically...except for I seem to have a deeper sense of negativity.  I think our community of serious simmers, who want the stars and the moon, cannot support the development of a sim that satisfies our needs.  I see us tinkering with virtually stagnate FSX/P3D and the slow growing XPLANE for the next 10 years.  Maybe thats ok for many of us, but I call it a decline from the growth days of 1985 to 2010.

I disagree about the growth rate. There may have been a feeling of more steady growth from one FS version to the next (and its competitors) back in Ye Olden Days, but there have been dramatic leaps forward lately.

Consider advances like the move to 64-bit memory, which has been exploited for a while now by X-Plane, and is just in the early stages of development to expand the capabilities of P3D. We now have support for much higher monitor resolutions and higher textures -- not just in the hardware but software support for things like HD and UHD mesh in X-Plane, and physics-based rendering.

Finally, I know not everyone is excited about VR, but this is something that's been anticipated for years, and it's finally here. In the baby stages yet, but it's still a massive leap forward in immersion.

The future is bright, from my perspective. We have enough companies working in this area, In addition, two of the three companies making civilian sims (LM and Laminar) are funded by other business interests that can help subsidize development. For at least the near future, I think we're in good hands.

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23 hours ago, Ted Striker said:

I’ve often thought that LM regarded us as paying beta testers. I assumed their commercial and professional customers were paying more and expecting more so they would use as to find the glaring bugs before releasing to the demanding high dollar customers. Just an assumption on my part.

Regarding ATC, if LM wanted to develop some ATC training software, who better to start off with us until the product is polished enough to release to the more critical professionals?

My only concern is that a day comes when LM decides P3D is so good they don’t need us anymore and raises the price exponentially.

Ted

this is also my concern too and i agree with you on the paying beta tester thing . LM pricing wil become like gas prices we are goin to  talk about it but still go and pump/pay for it again ..... 

The new developers of the next gen flight sim needs to be a team with 100% own (funded money pit)  team ............ 


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The path is not reinventing the wheel but to get the wheel back.

Cheers,

 

 

 

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5 hours ago, Sticky said:

True, weather and chase plane are pretty reliable. Curious though, does your REX runway light texture work? It seems that's broken in P3D4.

I have problems with GNS with freezes and such though too.

It's frustrating that we're all shoehorning all these great add-ons trying to make the perfect sim, will wanting better ATC...all at 59 FPS. 

Back to the point though, is it economically feasible for a developer to actually produce the what we want in a sim, or did FSW prove the market is just too small? 

I don't think it's economically feasible for any developer to cater to all the wildly different needs, wants and desires of every flight simmer. That's precisely why there are so many addons for P3D and XP. What the core developers have to do is open up the simulator to modifications as much as possible, and then stay out of the way and let publishers and developers choose how they want to distribute their add-ons, without forcing upon them royalties or certain distribution models.

Compare the number of people working on the core simulator to the total number of people involved with every add-on you have installed. You will see that it would take an enormous development team to give you a sim with the weather engine, flight dynamics, scenery, systems simulation, ATC etc. etc. that you get thanks to dozens or even hundreds of addons installed... and that's just *your* customized flight sim setup. Mine is probably completely different, with different priorities, demands etc. and a different set of addons.

Edited by AdvancedFollower
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8 hours ago, Gregg_Seipp said:

Maintaining P3D is difficult enough and has become worse lately with patches for add-ons scattered all over the place.

Unfortunately true for those that buy/use a lot of add-ons (like myself), but most of that comes from add-on developers leveraging several similar but not identical platforms (FSX, FSX-SE, P3D V1-4) where there is just enough of a difference that can trip them up and release a product with more obvious bugs.  Ironically most of my issues aren't with the base platform, but with conflicts across 3rd party vendors stepping on each other or legacy approaches that worked in FSX but so well in P3D V4.

LM's P3D has "tried" to push that process into a more "organized" and less conflicting layout but isn't enforcing it, still optional ... early attempts (add-on process) caused some issues with textures which hurt it's adoption with vendors.  But I feel as time goes by the kinks will get worked out, developers will be more familiar, and bugs will shift from being obvious to being more obscure ... but it's going to take time.

Cheers, Rob.

 

 

 

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6 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

LM's P3D has "tried" to push that process into a more "organized" and less conflicting layout but isn't enforcing it, still optional ... early attempts (add-on process) caused some issues with textures which hurt it's adoption with vendors. 

That's one thing I never understood. Why didn't LM just force all addon-makers to (i) follow the add-on.xml method, (ii) install the files themselves into one (1) freely chosen, but fixed place outside of the sim afterwards, when they released 4.0?

Developers would have cried.. for 2 months.. and finally given in. All that trouble with files scattered throughout the machine, two basic install methods and numerous config files and directories could have been a thing of the past today.

Or, they just should have left things as they were so far. In any case, the present situation is calling for trouble, continually.

Kind regards, Michael


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17 minutes ago, pmb said:

Developers would have cried.. for 2 months.. and finally given in

Developers giving in ... hmmm --- I doubt that, more like a riot :)   

Enforcement didn't happen because the 3rd party community of developers are indeed important to LM.  But regardless, what would the developers do about all existing products prior to the Add-On process?  Forcing developers to build new installers/logic on all their existing products would be very costly and that cost would have to paid by end users and I don't think that would fly with end users leaving developer with lots of work, and no revenue from it and diverting their time from other projects, overall just not a good thing to enforce at this point in time.

Cheers, Rob.

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