Farewell FSW

[nealmac 260]

Only seeing this news now. I’m genuinely very sorry to hear this. DT took a big risk and unfortunately it didn’t pay off. Also, I liked Chris, Aimee and the other staff. They came across as really nice folk, and always very helpful. I’m not sure how this will affect their employment status, but I hope they find employment really soon.

Best of luck in the future guys. 

Neal. 

 

[Adrian123 1,015]

You never own it anyway. They can pull the plug anytime.

[sightseer 895]

I'm surprised and saddened by this news.  I was expecting a breakthrough of progress at any moment...not a complete and total shutdown.

I had hopes.

[Wobbie 938]

So, lets just take a step back & consider where we actually have come from.

Basically, we are all searching for the Holy Grail in simming, so we will try grab any straws offered to us.

Of course there were sceptics that saw a flight sim being marketed by a gaming company that gave us Train & Fishing sims!  Then came FSX:SE.. Very successful, as we all know by now. We all knew/know DTG's business model of DLC's, & nobody forced us into getting involved with Steam. Again, our continual search for the Holy Grail.

We all raised eyebrows when we were offered that DTG called an 'early access' product, which, obviously was a nicer name for Beta. & we fell for it, by actually buying into this & spending money on an unfinished product. DTG wanted the community to get involved & to tell them what we wanted. Meh! we all have our own ideas of that, I& I'm sure DTG wondered what they were letting themselves in for. As for their developers... I'm sure it was very exciting for them to feel that they were getting into developing a new sim. However, as professionals, I'm sure they would have done a due diligence when offered a job with a gaming company targeting simmers.

Of course, developers wanted to get involved, but not on DTG's terms, of course.

Anyhow, as we all know, FSW cannot be compared with P3D. Two very different companies & target markets, One targeting the professional market, based on ESP, the other (FSX) being targeted at the entertainment market, the hobbyists, games, casual & serious simmers. So, please, no more comparisons. (Thats like comparing Windows vs Linux... (not being serious!))

Anyhow, I actually wonder how many of us posting in this forum have actually purchased FSW?

At the end of the day, it was just a matter of economics, same as when ACES was closed down.. the company is responsible to their shareholders, (not really us hobbyists) & if a division does not perform, for whatever reason, it must go. Sure, it is hard for their staff if they cannot be absorbed, retrenchment is never nice, & I'm sure there will be other openings elsewhere for talented people.

 

[torium 207]

20 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

Hmmmmmm.......

 

Actually a good summary with many good points.

[Bobsk8 12,492]

13 hours ago, ryebred2 said:

I have been a long time user of DTG's train sim franchises and have been unhappy with the path they have forged in that arena as well.

 

At the end of the day, game companies are like any other business in that they need to pay all of their workers salaries with hopefully some profit left over. Releasing a simulation platform is a massive undertaking and the market is fairly limited. Once the big rush of income comes in, it will slow down to a trickle in the future.

 

So, how do you continue to pay all of the salaries well into the future? The answer for most game companies is to develop another game. DTG sees the answer to the sustainable income problem as paid DLC. With their new Train Sim World, they released a buggy engine and were quick to hop over to releasing DLC packs for it which are also buggy. They do fix issues with the game engine here and there but every new DLC introduces new issues and there are plenty of long standing bugs still in the software from the initial release.

 

When DTG first released their classic Train SIm (Railworks) many years ago, it was very open to anyone to develop and release add-ons for. There were tons of freeware and payware content for the simulation. Over the years they slowly locked this down so that they could control all DLC which gives them a path to charge license fees and collect royalties from any other developer that wants to create a product for the platform. With the new Train Sim World they said from the beginning that they would release an SDK and be open to developers but I was skeptical and that hasn't transpired. The only ones that release content for TSW is DTG.

 

I saw FSW as the same exact model as TSW. They wanted to tightly control the DLC so that they could make money off of it and have sustainable income over the long term. The reason FSW failed and TSW has not yet failed is because of the existence of competition. In the Train market, there really isn't any competition and hasn't been for a while other than the very limited Run8. That means train simmers are either forced to put up with sub par content at high prices or skip train simming altogether. If there was ever a high quality, fully featured, third party friendly train simulator released from a competitor, I am sure new purchases on DTG's train simulators would die fairly quickly like FSW.

I tried to tell folks about this when DTG first announced a flight sim, and very few agreed with me . DTG survives by selling new DLC all the time for cash flow, and put the DLC on the market before many of the bugs are worked out. Then your chances of them fixing these bugs once you purchase the DLC , is slim to none, because the programmers are occupied with making the next bug ridden piece of DLC. For a Trainsim or a fishing sim, it isn't the end of the world when something doesn't work correctly. Flight Simmers would never put up with that, It was doomed from day one. 

Edited April 25, 2018 by Bobsk8

[Elvensmith 165]

5 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

I tried to tell folks about this when DTG first announced a flight sim, and very few agreed with me . DTG survives by selling new DLC all the time for cash flow, and put the DLC on the market before many of the bugs are worked out. Then your chances of them fixing these bugs once you purchase the DLC , is slim to none, because the programmers are occupied with making the next bug ridden piece of DLC. For a Trainsim or a fishing sim, it isn't the end of the world when something doesn't work correctly. Flight Simmers would never put up with that, It was doomed from day one. 

Not all train simmers do!

I bought the first two Train Sim World iterations but refuse to waste any more money on what amounts to arcade junk, from a company that consistently ignores user feedback - often from experienced railway people - about what is wrong. I also very rarely buy DLC for their legacy product these days and if I do, 50% of the time I have exercised the 2 hour refund option on Steam (how they must hate that!). There are those who think the company can do no wrong when it comes to train stuff but checking some of the forums there's a growing level of impatience that nothing ever gets fixed - be it the promised editors for TSW or long standing issues in Railworks.

Edited April 25, 2018 by Elvensmith
A harmless word to describe over enthusistic supporter of a game not allowed!

[WotanUK 289]

7 hours ago, torium said:

Actually a good summary with many good points.

Sorry, what good points?  It's not the developers fault, it's the communities fault, we just want the same old stuff apparently and don't like new ideas and innovations that FSW offered us, like..?  This is the worst summerisation i have ever had the misfortune to watch

The mouthy one in the bottom right of the screen basically attempts to say that PMDG killed FSW, whilst ignoring that people like Aerosoft / FSL / Flight 1 / ORBX never produced anything substantial either.  Even if RSR had a grudge to bear against FSW...so what, It's his company?  Is he saying that PMDG single handedly can decide what fails and what succeds, if so what about XP11?  He mentions how long it took to bring PMDG products to FSX SE, failing to mention it took much longer to bring them to P3D and it cost money, is RSR trying to kill P3D?  He even thinks that we killed FSW because we were not willing to wait for all the super features that were *just* around the corner, same as i guess those Trainsim fans that only have to wait for the 90th iteration of trainsim to finally fix the bugs. 

One of them seems to know some of them personally, i would say a conflict of interest.

I don't stream, but 'Novamouth' could have completed this stream in 10 seconds, 'FSW failed because it offered less than the competition'! Maybe i'll end with one of my favourite phrases non loqui sed facere.

Edited April 25, 2018 by WotanUK

[Buffy Foster 133]

I think these guys have a better take on it (maybe some NSFW language but not really very much):

 

[hervef 47]

It’s funny, but nobody seems to know and consider the 64 bits Aerofly fs2, already with some Orbx scenery addons... it is clearly the most up to date 64 bits platform, and Orbx just annonced that in few weeks will come more airports and Truescape Regions... as I long time use of fs9, them fsx, then owner of P3D, and even X-Plane 11, I just want to invite you to check this wonderful simulator, just in case.... cheers

[Bobsk8 12,492]

18 minutes ago, hervef said:

It’s funny, but nobody seems to know and consider the 64 bits Aerofly fs2, already with some Orbx scenery addons... it is clearly the most up to date 64 bits platform, and Orbx just annonced that in few weeks will come more airports and Truescape Regions... as I long time use of fs9, them fsx, then owner of P3D, and even X-Plane 11, I just want to invite you to check this wonderful simulator, just in case.... cheers

Nobody wants to fly in a tiny area of the world. Period. 

[pmb 5,137]

15 minutes ago, hervef said:

It’s funny, but nobody seems to know and consider the 64 bits Aerofly fs2, already with some Orbx scenery addons... it is clearly the most up to date 64 bits platform

I agree to that. AeroflyFS2 has the advantage of stunning visuals and superior performance, typically 120fps, and this includes autogenated areas. Compared to FSW (I own both of them) it has the distinctive advantage of being "different" - neither is it a heir of FSX nor XP.

The downside is a lot of features (AI, ATC, weather, car traffic...) are still missing and development of the core sim is going sloooooow. Despite, I like it very much, just for the visuals. 

And Bob, the AeroflyFS2 world isn't that tiny anymore. Look at the Freeware/Payware contents by IPACS and ORBX. Plus,  you can easily make your own photoground using GeoConvert +  Cultivation -  even I can do it, and I am all but a coder!

Kind regards, Michael

[HiFlyer 9,343]

19 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

Nobody wants to fly in a tiny area of the world. Period. 

Yet FSW took that to heart and offered the entire world.....

And people still turned up their noses. The truth is that some people live in an FSX/P3D universe, and there appears to be zero chance they will ever seriously consider anything new/different that might threaten their years of prior commitment/investment.

People are cheering FSW's demise the exact same way they did for FLIGHT, even though DTG carefully avoided most of FLIGHTS supposed faults (and still got no slack)

My takeaway is that the community is stuck at the bottom of a huge, deep, partisan rut, where little to no new sunlight can get in.

[GCBraun 2,390]

1 hour ago, hervef said:

It’s funny, but nobody seems to know and consider the 64 bits Aerofly fs2, already with some Orbx scenery addons... it is clearly the most up to date 64 bits platform, and Orbx just annonced that in few weeks will come more airports and Truescape Regions... as I long time use of fs9, them fsx, then owner of P3D, and even X-Plane 11, I just want to invite you to check this wonderful simulator, just in case.... cheers

Give me ONE advanced aircraft, GA or Jet, and I would fly AF2 more often. Add VATSIM/IVAO support and it might become my #2 sim. 

VR support (another must-have for me) is already there, at least. 

Edited April 25, 2018 by GCBraun

[DrumsArt 270]

52 minutes ago, hervef said:

It’s funny, but nobody seems to know and consider the 64 bits Aerofly fs2, already with some Orbx scenery addons... it is clearly the most up to date 64 bits platform, and Orbx just annonced that in few weeks will come more airports and Truescape Regions... as I long time use of fs9, them fsx, then owner of P3D, and even X-Plane 11, I just want to invite you to check this wonderful simulator, just in case.... cheers

You're right...but...

Personally I have been waiting since the beginning for some news about planes worthy of A2A, Pmdg, some Aerosoft, Milviz and so and so.....
What I've seen so far are some really beautiful sceneries (Orbx) and many updates mainly about VR that I don't care about at the moment.
Again, regarding aircraft with correctly modeled systems (please not "you know what I mean" or equivalent), I don't see anything coming, silence radio, nothing, nada...

It's a shame because I sincerely think that this program is really different from the Fsx, P3D family, unlike Fsw which was less well than these elders and just as expected collapses.

Something tells me that if Aerofly fs2 moved a little more at the level of aircraft simulation with the talented developers we know, the world of flight simulation could evolve towards something very new and attractive.

Regards,

 

 

Edited April 25, 2018 by DrumsArt