Farewell FSW

[greggerm 312]

4 minutes ago, WotanUK said:

Mathijs Kok just posted that the entire development team has been let go.  If true very sorry for the people involved;

That's the part that I don't like in all this. The devs were given a roadmap to follow for the technology, but the behind-the-scenes business decisions that ultimately made FlightSimWorld a non-viable product is not their fault.

Its too bad Dovetail never did release the SDK. If they had, at least their programming legacy could have had some shot at carrying on.

[Parping Couplet 117]

BEARlyThereCDN makes a good point that Dovetail's initial foray with refining FSX to some extent actually worked well.

With the benefit of hindsight, however, we can now appreciate that their interest in this hobby or "space" as Stephen Hood would irritatingly refer to it in every one of those awful FSW presentations, was based on eventually changing the nature of the business model and diverting a high percentage of its revenues directly to them.

To achieve that they needed our support for FSW and I think it soon became very clear that they really had no coherent strategy to achieve that.

Their departure is very welcome indeed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[pmb 5,137]

19 minutes ago, WotanUK said:

Mathijs Kok just posted that the entire development team has been let go.  If true very sorry for the people involved; but i wonder if it signals bigger issues at DTG?

DTG took huge loans for FSW, you could follow up this on their enterprise website when FSW was in its early stages, where they were quite proud of this. On the other hand, FSW certainly produced a minute return only (keep in mind all the Sales plus all FlightSchool owners got it for free).

FSW for sure was a major financial debacle for DTG, only to cope with by cross-financing (from TSW and FSE:SE).

Kind regards, Michael

[tonywob 4,768]

This is sad news, especially for the developers who have lost their jobs over this. Whilst many didn't like DTG's business model, it's not a good time in this hobby when a flight sim dies, and for people (and certain companies) who are using this as an opportunity to gloat and promote their own agenda, have a bit of respect and decency, one day it could happen to you.

 

[torium 207]

5 minutes ago, tonywob said:

This is sad news, especially for the developers who have lost their jobs over this. Whilst many didn't like DTG's business model, it's not a good time in this hobby when a flight sim dies, and for people (and certain companies) who are using this as an opportunity to gloat and promote their own agenda, have a bit of respect and decency, one day it could happen to you.

 

Thank you for a respectful comment, tonywob.

Edited April 23, 2018 by torium

[Lenny777 299]

Liked the rain and snow effects. The default planes were very nice and missions. But again overpriced (and what few there were) addons. There truly was not a path to success with this 64 bit version of FSX. But they stripped virtually everything which made FSX successful and P3Dv4 - addons. 

[dave2013 1,123]

ORBX has shut down any discussion of this on their forums.  John Venema states "It is sad to hear this news and we need to be considerate and graceful in remarks that we make around the internet. Seeing a sim platform close is never good for our industry and your hobby."

First, we don't need lectures about what kind of remarks to make regarding FSW's demise.  Secondly, I disagree completely with him that seeing a sim platform close is never good for the industry and our hobby.  Developers/vendors that make lots of promises, get folks excited about a new simulator, happily take their money, and then shortly thereafter close up shop without accomplishing very much and leaving those who bought the thing with a not-even-close-to-being-completed simulator aren't doing the flightsim community any favors and are just wasting all our time.

I'm disappointed that FSW failed as I was rooting for it, and I'm really sorry for all the good folks who have lost their jobs.  However, this doesn't mean that it's wrong to criticize DTG, and as almost always in cases such as this I'm sure it's the managers and executives at the company who likely caused this and deserve the blame.

That's all I will say on this subject.  I'm now looking forward to what P3D and Xplane have in store for us in the future.

Dave

 

 

 

Edited April 23, 2018 by dave2013

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

The overall flightsim market has shrunk substantially since Microsoft released FSX. Much of that shrinkage has to do with video gaming moving on to consoles and smartphones and away from desktop computers. So to start with, with a smaller market, the risk of entering that market is increased.  That was one factor. The other risk factor  was the complexity of developing a whole-world flightsim with realistic models, weather, scenery, etc..

To put FSW demise in perspective, it took a small shop like LR 11 major versions (and 28 years) to get to where X-Plane is today. I don't think anybody outside of Austin Meyer's immediate family even heard of X-Plane until version 5. I didn't buy it until version 10. It seems that XP11 has always been around  in its current state but that's an illusion. Take a look at this summary of revisions that someone on .ORG did:

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/18635-x-plane-version-history-links/

It's taken a giant US defense contractor, LM, 4 versions to do the same with P3d and they started with the FSX code. P3d 1.4 was just a cleaned up version of FSX, probably equivalent to FSX-SE. LM didn't get to 64 bit until just recently.

DTG misjudged the amount of work it would take to short-circuit that development time and attempted to make a leap from FSX directly to something equivalent to P3d4 and XP11. And thrown in for good measure was the conversion from 32 bit code to 64 bit. Before people accuse me of hindsight, I said from the initial release of FSW that the S in the acronym really stood for Sisyphus. And unlike Sisyphus, the rock just kept getting bigger and the hill higher. I bought FSW when it was released and I faithfully did test drives with every revision. But the early access approach was too protracted and I gave up on FSW. Now DTG has given up on us.

Edited April 23, 2018 by jabloomf1230
oops 28 years since version 1sorry.

[bonchie 2,305]

1 hour ago, pmb said:

DTG took huge loans for FSW, you could follow up this on their enterprise website when FSW was in its early stages, where they were quite proud of this. On the other hand, FSW certainly produced a minute return only (keep in mind all the Sales plus all FlightSchool owners got it for free).

FSW for sure was a major financial debacle for DTG, only to cope with by cross-financing (from TSW and FSE:SE).

Kind regards, Michael

There has to be more to this story.

If they have loans, why would they not continue to sell the product to recoup as much as they can? Why not a $5 flash sale on Steam as a final grab? I wonder if MS was one of the creditors and FSW lost the rights to their own product.

That's the only thing that makes sense to me. Why else remove it from Steam?

 

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

4 minutes ago, bonchie said:

Why else remove it from Steam?

 

I don't think it's all that complicated. If your product is touted as "early access" (a code term for unfinished) and you decide as the developer to pull the plug, Steam isn't going to let you continue to sell the product under false pretenses. 

[MadDog 353]

6 minutes ago, bonchie said:

There has to be more to this story.

If they have loans, why would they not continue to sell the product to recoup as much as they can? Why not a $5 flash sale on Steam as a final grab? I wonder if MS was one of the creditors and FSW lost the rights to their own product.

I agree that there is more to the story.  Not sure about losing the rights though... there has been no mention of removing FSX-SE from Steam.

[MadDog 353]

6 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

I don't think it's all that complicated. If your product is touted as "early access" (a code term for unfinished) and you decide as the developer to pull the plug, Steam isn't going to let you continue to sell the product under false pretenses. 

...except that FSW officially graduated from "early access" at the beginning of the year.

 

Edited April 23, 2018 by MadDog

[bonchie 2,305]

6 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

I don't think it's all that complicated. If your product is touted as "early access" (a code term for unfinished) and you decide as the developer to pull the plug, Steam isn't going to let you continue to sell the product under false pretenses. 

Even if that were the issue, literally all they would have to do is send it to full release on Steam as the final version instead of green lighting it as early access

Edited April 23, 2018 by bonchie

[pmb 5,137]

4 minutes ago, bonchie said:

There has to be more to this story.

If they have loans, why would they not continue to sell the product to recoup as much as they can? Why not a $5 flash sale on Steam as a final grab? I wonder if MS was one of the creditors and FSW lost the rights to their own product.

That's the only thing that makes sense to me. Why else remove it from Steam?

Perhaps, because any further support and distribution, maintaining forums etc. requires more money (human resources) than they would gain? 

I am all but a financial expert but I could imagine one of their banks / funds just wanted to see money. That might explain the short-term cut given they spoke on further development until quite recently.

Kind regards, Michael

[bonchie 2,305]

1 minute ago, pmb said:

Perhaps, because any further support and distribution, maintaining forums etc. requires more money (human resources) than they would gain? 

I am all but a financial expert but I could imagine one of their banks / funds just wanted to see money. That might explain the short-term cut given they spoke on further development until quite recently.

Kind regards, Michael

It may mean that DTG is closing down all together. Otherwise, I don't see why they'd stop selling the product, even unsupported (which does happen).