Farewell FSW

[rapsta 1]

Hm. That sounds a little bit error prone to me if Ben has to implement Code in the Core for several different Plugins. Did I get that right? If yes, why not alter the SDK and implement something like simconnect as an Interface. So everyone has to play with standardized rules. Ergo less bug intensive. (Normally ;-))

I have sure no deep Insight to the dev process. So it is only my very narrow and limited sight to it.

[Kangaby 14]

This stopped being about FSW a long time ago.

Time to lock this thread and move on.

[A32xx 129]

21 hours ago, n4gix said:

I remember that conversation. I was appalled and gutted when I learned that C/C++ was deliberately purged from FSW, as it totally killed my interest in developing for it.

The Just Flight Arrow III has .gau and .dll files in it's FSW DLC directory.

[n4gix 4,947]

1 hour ago, A32xx said:

The Just Flight Arrow III has .gau and .dll files in it's FSW DLC directory.

Does it now? Since I don't have that I've no way of verifying, so I'll take your word for it. The very limited SDK they released had none of the requisite files included such as gauges.h, gps_info.h, et cetera, nor anything similar to SimConnect which would be required for interfacing C++ to the sim's internals.

None of my 64bit .dll files would work either...

[A32xx 129]

8 minutes ago, n4gix said:

Does it now? Since I don't have that I've no way of verifying, so I'll take your word for it. The very limited SDK they released had none of the requisite files included such as gauges.h, gps_info.h, et cetera, nor anything similar to SimConnect which would be required for interfacing C++ to the sim's internals.

To be honest, I've no way of verifying that they're actually used in FSW, but they're there nonetheless. The SDK was indeed incomplete in several areas and was deemed to be another work in progress, so I can't confirm that C++ definitely wasn't supported by FSW in some way either.

Edited April 29, 2018 by A32xx

[n4gix 4,947]

15 minutes ago, A32xx said:

To be honest, I've no way of verifying that they're actually used in FSW, but they're there nonetheless. The SDK was indeed incomplete in several areas and was deemed to be another work in progress, so I can't confirm that C++ definitely wasn't supported by FSW in some way either.

I was attempting to get the Milviz C310R Redux Edition working in FSW, but while the model itself loaded just fine, with none of the supporting modules (.dll) working, it was a lost cause...

[A32xx 129]

We've all lost out there, I would have loved to see the C310 in FSW.

[HiFlyer 9,358]

 

[barrel_owl 304]

5 hours ago, A32xx said:

We've all lost out there, I would have loved to see the C310 in FSW.

Agreed. I used the C310 a lot in FSX/FSX-SE and it is something I am really missing in X-Plane, although many new high-quality GAs have been released.
Definitely we all lost with FSW failure. Shame. 

Edited April 29, 2018 by barrel_owl

[CFIJose 5,485]

12 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

 

Everyone who cares about this community should watch and listen to the video. It pretty much summarizes everything I wanted to say about why I felt & predicted FSW would fail.

I read some comments on this thread implying that this prediction is after the fact. My answer is, "I didn't invest in a fully loaded P3D v4 & XPlane 11, and prior to that FS2004 & FSX, to make uninformed predictions."

It's sad. but it was predictable.

[Boomer 1,619]

60%...yep, Froogle is bang on target.

[CaptCWGAllen 49]

Here in the UK 'Limited Company' accounts are public - anyone can access them through Companies House. Railsimulations.com Ltd is the parent company of Dovetail Games. Accounts are available for each year up to March 2017. They tell an interesting story, seemingly not a happy one over the last three years of published accounts, but one can only read between the lines . They do state that there is an outstanding royalty commitment of £1.32m  within what's owed to "other creditors" for "technology being used in one of the Company's simulator products. This is a royalty based licence agreement which is payable in stages by 24-12-2018". One wonders whether the licence reverts if the last installment is not paid - and if so will it be up for sale again.  We'll have to wait until 2017-18 accounts are issued this November. May of course be for something other than the ESP engine.

cheers

Peter     

                                                 

[A32xx 129]

Recently quoted on the FSW Steam forum:

"Originally posted by Chris Trott:

Also, I have a major problem with another base premise of your editorial. Dovetail did have experience in flight simulation. I'm sorry that you have forgotten that Dovetail was made up of many of the original ACES team that worked on both Microsoft Train Simulator AND FSX. I'm sorry that you forgot that I reminded you of that months ago when you got it wrong the last time you went on a rant about their "lack of experience." Microsoft picked Dovetail because they had that background experience, not just the money. Dovetail had, among its programmers, the guys who literally wrote Simconnect from nothing. The experience was there.

I'm not going to go into depth like I was tempted to with my end of this, but I'll summarize my feelings as such -

1) Robert Randazzo is not a "pillar" or "leader" of our community. He doesn't deserve to be heard. He hated DTG because they outbid him and never gave them a chance. They approached him in good faith and he told them off. He continues to make money because of the things DTG did to FSX to make it more stable and allow him to make addons that previously would have crashed FSX immediately and he has no respect for them at all.

2) Aerosoft are their own worst enemies. Mathjis is one to talk since it was Aerosoft that was one of the worst offenders prior to the self-publishing revolution a decade ago with their "fees". 

Flight1 and Aerosoft both took 50%+ of the sale price of an addon before the digital download revolution took hold and allowed developers to self-publish. Aerosoft is not a DEVELOPER first, they are a PUBLISHER first. 

They claimed to have their own FS in development prior to the FSX license deal. What happened to it? Oh yeah, they abandoned it because they wanted to bid on FSX. Now it's gone, GSX v2 is gone (and talk about a money making scheme - GSX is one), and Aerosoft haven't released any of their promised addons on time since because they were relying on 3rd party developers with (wait for it) - NO EXPERIENCE prior in FS.

3) Carenado, ORBX, and A2A all licensed or published addons for FlightSimWorld (A2A licensed AccuFeel, ORBX licensed GlobalVector, Carenado released several FSW-specific addons). There were those in the business who did support FSW and tried to work with DTG. The problem was there was a lot of venom (mostly egged on by those who lost the FSX bid and put out misinformation and lies) that over-powered those trying to genuinely help. Those who were helping Dovetail stayed silent about it because they feared the kind of vile response that DTG was getting simply for trying.

4) Dovetail was in trouble from before Flight School. You failed to mention it (again) but Dovetail sold a substantial share in the business to a Venture Capital company a couple years ago. Why? Because Trainsim World, their new sim platform, was in trouble and hemorraging money. The conversion to UT2 wasn't going as well as hoped, they needed more staff, and the money wasn't there. 

As such, they pulled most of the Flight School team off (and then cancelled it) and the team that remained to work on FSW was less than 10. It never got above 15 afterward. How do you expect 15 people to build a program on the level of XPlane or P3D when you have less than 1/3 the workforce? 

Laminar had at least 50 working on XPlane at one point (if not 100), and who knows how many Lockheed has working on P3D. Would a less hostile environment from the community and publishers have encouraged them to put more people on it? I don't know. But it certainly didn't help give confidence that they would get rewarded if they did.

In the end, the reason FSW died is because of us, not Dovetail. We allowed a hostile environment to fester within this community and didn't support it. I see it in the comments here. Everyone "I called it...", "I knew it wasn't going to work...", etc. You're right - you created a self-fulfilling prophecy. You never gave them a chance. Don't blame Steven Hood. Blame yourself for not supporting the guys who were actually working and trying to do something for the community that we'd been asking for."

[torium 207]

See A32xx comment:  Chris Trott commented on Froogle's video.

Edited April 30, 2018 by torium

[HiFlyer 9,358]

16 minutes ago, A32xx said:

Recently quoted on the FSW Steam forum:

"Originally posted by Chris Trott:

Also, I have a major problem with another base premise of your editorial. Dovetail did have experience in flight simulation. I'm sorry that you have forgotten that Dovetail was made up of many of the original ACES team that worked on both Microsoft Train Simulator AND FSX. I'm sorry that you forgot that I reminded you of that months ago when you got it wrong the last time you went on a rant about their "lack of experience." Microsoft picked Dovetail because they had that background experience, not just the money. Dovetail had, among its programmers, the guys who literally wrote Simconnect from nothing. The experience was there.

I'm not going to go into depth like I was tempted to with my end of this, but I'll summarize my feelings as such -

1) Robert Randazzo is not a "pillar" or "leader" of our community. He doesn't deserve to be heard. He hated DTG because they outbid him and never gave them a chance. They approached him in good faith and he told them off. He continues to make money because of the things DTG did to FSX to make it more stable and allow him to make addons that previously would have crashed FSX immediately and he has no respect for them at all.

2) Aerosoft are their own worst enemies. Mathjis is one to talk since it was Aerosoft that was one of the worst offenders prior to the self-publishing revolution a decade ago with their "fees". 

Flight1 and Aerosoft both took 50%+ of the sale price of an addon before the digital download revolution took hold and allowed developers to self-publish. Aerosoft is not a DEVELOPER first, they are a PUBLISHER first. 

They claimed to have their own FS in development prior to the FSX license deal. What happened to it? Oh yeah, they abandoned it because they wanted to bid on FSX. Now it's gone, GSX v2 is gone (and talk about a money making scheme - GSX is one), and Aerosoft haven't released any of their promised addons on time since because they were relying on 3rd party developers with (wait for it) - NO EXPERIENCE prior in FS.

3) Carenado, ORBX, and A2A all licensed or published addons for FlightSimWorld (A2A licensed AccuFeel, ORBX licensed GlobalVector, Carenado released several FSW-specific addons). There were those in the business who did support FSW and tried to work with DTG. The problem was there was a lot of venom (mostly egged on by those who lost the FSX bid and put out misinformation and lies) that over-powered those trying to genuinely help. Those who were helping Dovetail stayed silent about it because they feared the kind of vile response that DTG was getting simply for trying.

4) Dovetail was in trouble from before Flight School. You failed to mention it (again) but Dovetail sold a substantial share in the business to a Venture Capital company a couple years ago. Why? Because Trainsim World, their new sim platform, was in trouble and hemorraging money. The conversion to UT2 wasn't going as well as hoped, they needed more staff, and the money wasn't there. 

As such, they pulled most of the Flight School team off (and then cancelled it) and the team that remained to work on FSW was less than 10. It never got above 15 afterward. How do you expect 15 people to build a program on the level of XPlane or P3D when you have less than 1/3 the workforce? 

Laminar had at least 50 working on XPlane at one point (if not 100), and who knows how many Lockheed has working on P3D. Would a less hostile environment from the community and publishers have encouraged them to put more people on it? I don't know. But it certainly didn't help give confidence that they would get rewarded if they did.

In the end, the reason FSW died is because of us, not Dovetail. We allowed a hostile environment to fester within this community and didn't support it. I see it in the comments here. Everyone "I called it...", "I knew it wasn't going to work...", etc. You're right - you created a self-fulfilling prophecy. You never gave them a chance. Don't blame Steven Hood. Blame yourself for not supporting the guys who were actually working and trying to do something for the community that we'd been asking for."

So is all this true? Well, it feels like the "other side" of a story where pretty much only one side has been heard, so far......

Perhaps something approaching the "real" story will eventually be triangulated.