5 minutes ago, torium said:

On top of it all, DTG pointed out several times, quote: "Something we have said time and time again is that we are committed to this for the long run. We are realists, by that I mean we know it will take years to build up this new platform and the infrastructure around it to match the current landscape of flight simulation."

So what went wrong? Did they count on a mass sale during the first year - of an unfinished product? It may not be called realism? I liked the attempt with MS Flight too - so I'm used to suffer defeat in this hobby.

Yes good points.  I suppose we will never actually get an answer, unless a disgruntled (and one assumes ex-exployee) of DTG decides to publish what when on behind the scenes.

I can only speak for me but FSW would have been my main sim if it had all the features of FSX, but with 64-bit, better ATC, the career mode element they actually introduced at the end and perhaps most critically add on developer support with a fully featured SDK.

2 hours ago, WotanUK said:

Your last sentance again puts the blame on the community...what should we have done differently, i purchased it, i didn't buy any of the DLC because it didn't interest me in the slightest, i'll bet a significant portion of the community were waiting for more features to buy it, IFR and tubeliners for the majority. 

Excactly. I bought and tried it, too. Plus, I (and many others) contributed several ideas as well as no-gos to the features lists Dovetail asked the community for early on. I recall a Steam forum thread > 500 contributions long. One of the central requirements was a freely accessible SDK for payware as well as freeware developers alike. Some of those contributions were very profound, indeed and might be valuable for anone starting over anew.

Not only didn't Dovetail's Martin as the initiator find us worth at least a honest reply or evaluation of our ideas. Even worse, some central wise proposals were completely left out in the end.

This was the moment where I smelled fish. Long before the advent of FlightSchool indeed.

If you ask me, Dovetail got what they deserved. Unfortunately, as usual, I suspect the poor coders will be laid off while mismanagement will survive.

Kind regards, Michael

2 hours ago, Wobbie said:

Maybe they were excited with their success with FSX:SE, & with the communitee's excitement & wanting more.

So they tried modding the FSX core & asked for their communities help for ideas, & got them to pay to become beta testers.

 

No. It was the inital plan and part of the Microsoft Dovetail deal to (i) develop FSX:SE with only debugging allowed (ii) develop a new title based on FSX and/or Flight!

http://uk.pcmag.com/pc-games-products/33993/news/dovetail-games-revives-microsofts-flight-simulator

Kind regards, Michael

14 hours ago, tonywob said:

Flyinside are also releasing their simulator this year. Let's hope that doesn't immediately get attacked as well.

I'll disagree with you Tony, I certainly don't like seeing development efforts getting "attacked" but unless that development effort has realistic funding in the $100-200 Million US they will fail.  Hopefully it should be rather obvious by now that coming to this market and providing something less than what already exists in P3D/XP11 is just wasting time and money and resource.  

This market can barely support two major platforms P3D and XP11 in terms of user support/spending/content providers.  Repeating the same "we can do it better" come spend your money with us has not worked and will not work.  I wish folks like iPACs and DGT would have worked WITH existing platform development groups LM/P3D or LR/XP11 and approached LM/LR with some type of agreement on how they might be able to help move the platforms along faster for a certain financial compensation.  For example, FSW team could have brought PBR to P3D sooner rather than later.  iPAC may have been able to bring VR to XP11 sooner rather than later.  Instead we got yet more competition in already crowded market of two key players.  P3D and XP11 can be as simple or as complex as the end user wants to make them ... I can jump into any XP11 or P3D aircraft and just go fly, or I can spend hours of planning go the C&D route on a very complex aircraft from ground services, ATC, Traffic, etc. etc. ... it's all there, build on it.

AF2 may not officially announce "retirement" but I'll be surprised if we see major growth in that platform any time soon.  Sure they've release a few airports/scenery and added a few aircraft, but relative to what's been released for XP11 and P3D those are MANY orders of magnitude higher (for every 1 location/airport in AF2, 150 locations/airports and 100+ aircraft are released for P3D).

Don't get me wrong, FSW and AF2 development teams did bring something better to the flight simulator world, but just not enough and incomplete relative to P3D/XP11.  Their programming talents/resources could have been put to better use.

And now Flyinside?  Do they have a $100-$200 Million budget to bring a flight simulator that meets current major platforms feature for feature with a very good SDK/PDK and looks at least "as good" as P3D/XP11 and comes with a plethora of content (airports/scenery/etc.)?  Didn't Aerosoft release a flight simulator product recently also that went almost unnoticed?

No disrespect to any of these development efforts, but please for the love of flight simulation, work WITH existing two major players instead to help them bring new elements to their platforms.  Blaiming "users" for not supporting yet another flight simulator platform is a road to now where ... should NEVER go there.

Cheers, Rob.

This, quoted from Rob, is actually one of the most important things quoted on this forum.. "This market can barely support two major platforms P3D and XP11 in terms of user support/spending/content providers.  Repeating the same "we can do it better" come spend your money with us has not worked and will not work. "

&  "No disrespect to any of these development efforts, but please for the love of flight simulation, work WITH existing two major players instead to help them bring new elements to their platforms.  Blaming "users" for not supporting yet another flight simulator platform is a road to now where ... should NEVER go there."

 

That actually sums up these discussions.!

Well spoken, Rob.

 

8 minutes ago, Wobbie said:

This, quoted from Rob, is actually one of the most important things quoted on this forum.. "This market can barely support two major platforms P3D and XP11 in terms of user support/spending/content providers.  Repeating the same "we can do it better" come spend your money with us has not worked and will not work. "

&  "No disrespect to any of these development efforts, but please for the love of flight simulation, work WITH existing two major players instead to help them bring new elements to their platforms.  Blaming "users" for not supporting yet another flight simulator platform is a road to now where ... should NEVER go there."

 

That actually sums up these discussions.!

Well spoken, Rob.

 

Hey Robin,

On the other hand would it not have been good to have a new development that succeeds to break us out of the FSX/XPL never ending story. What if LM start to think they are wasting time with P3D, so they pull out leaving us waiting for XP14? Back to FSX?

 

Steve, I'm sure that will not be an issue. Remember P3D is an on-going regularly updated product. Just as when FSX development became frozen, the support never died.

You will probably have a continuation of add-ons, just as what happened. It's the add-ons that make the sim for us.

4 minutes ago, SteveW said:

On the other hand would it not have been good to have a new development that succeeds to break us out of the FSX/XPL never ending story. What if LM start to think they are wasting time with P3D, so they pull out leaving us waiting for XP14? Back to FSX?

Your point is well taken, but the upshot of your comment is that either we need a spare sim in the market that nobody supports, or we all have to buy into another sim and all the DLC even if we don't really want too.  I might be in a minority, but i really don't want to buy an expensive aircraft like the FSL A320 for P3D, XP11 and the new sim, so i have to be platform specific.

3 minutes ago, WotanUK said:

Your point is well taken, but the upshot of your comment is that either we need a spare sim in the market that nobody supports, or we all have to buy into another sim and all the DLC even if we don't really want too.  I might be in a minority, but i really don't want to buy an expensive aircraft like the FSL A320 for P3D, XP11 and the new sim, so i have to be platform specific.

Yes that's it.

43 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

This market can barely support two major platforms P3D and XP11 in terms of user support/spending/content providers.  Repeating the same "we can do it better" come spend your money with us has not worked and will not work. 

+1
This was the question I kept wondering about, and asked a few times in the FSW forums during development. What are you offering that I can't already get in the sim I'm currently flying? 

There was never a good answer beyond "flight training" and that's not something I'm especially interested in. I've always thought that was a dead end for attracting newbies to flight simulation. The current sims are just not that hard to get started with, if you're serious about learning aviation. And the gamer market wants instant gratification like jumping right into a Lear jet. 

I should have been an easy customer for something truly new and exciting in flight sims, because I have no interest in airliners. Show me something in GA that's better than what I'm already flying in X-Plane and I'm there. But they still had nothing to offer me. DTG just didn't have any real reason to be putting a new flight sim on the market beyond "we want to make money selling DLC."

 

8 minutes ago, SteveW said:

On the other hand would it not have been good to have a new development that succeeds to break us out of the FSX/XPL never ending story. What if LM start to think they are wasting time with P3D, so they pull out leaving us waiting for XP14? Back to FSX?

I think that's a legitimate concern, although it has to be balanced against what Rob points out about the flight sim market barely able to support two major sims.

Just one small example -- I bought a Saitek multipanel, designed originally for the FS/FSX market. It was only in the last year that we X-Plane users got an official Saitek (now Logitech) driver for it. There was a user-made drive available as a workaround, but it points out how hardware manufacturers aren't going to support more than one, or at most two, major sim platforms. The same goes, in general, for software-based add-ons like utilities, scenery, and aircraft models.

Not having all your eggs in one basket is good, in case one of the two major sims suddenly goes away. But too many choices puts a damper on add-on support. As we all should know by now, add-on support is where a flight sim platform lives or dies in the long term.

44 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

And now Flyinside?  Do they have a $100-$200 Million budget to bring a flight simulator that meets current major platforms feature for feature with a very good SDK/PDK and looks at least "as good" as P3D/XP11 and comes with a plethora of content (airports/scenery/etc.)?

I think it depends on what their ultimate goal is and which user base they are aiming for. If they aiming for the professional market or the PMDG airliner crowd then I think they'll have a fight on their hands, but if their goal is to release a cheap, uncomplicated and fast simulator that runs on VR headsets then I'm sure there is a place in that area for them. It's these sort of cheap and fast to use simulators that will attract users onto the bigger established platforms such as P3D and X-Plane, so I see it as a good thing.

One of the biggest challenges for any new sim is that people will compare it to a fully-loaded P3D with hundreds/thousands of dollars worth of addons. Nothing can complete against that at present, so it's probably not something to be aiming for.

 

 

9 minutes ago, Wobbie said:

This, quoted from Rob, is actually one of the most important things quoted on this forum.. "This market can barely support two major platforms P3D and XP11 in terms of user support/spending/content providers.  Repeating the same "we can do it better" come spend your money with us has not worked and will not work. "

Yes, it may well be a good analysis. It may be the truth. This means that the market is very small - and likely to be less. As tonywob previously correctly pointed out, quote: - "[P3D] "aren't aiming to produce a consumer sim for the masses, but rather a closed/niche community of professional users (with deep pockets). FSW was aimed at normal consumers who buy games through Steam etc, it sadly failed and suffered exactly the same fate as FSX and Microsoft Flight. At least AF2 and X-Plane are still going strong and not showing any signs of dying out (Without these two sims, there would be no consumer flight sim available)".

Exactly. Lockheed Martin confirms:  [P3D] - "(6) for purposes other than personal/consumer entertainment". Not a consumer sim for the masses. Too bad. I do not know if Lockheed Martin really can - or have any interest in doing something about this problem.

13 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

The current sims are just not that hard to get started with, if you're serious about learning aviation.

I'm surprised how many newbies who are struggling to understand. But as mentioned - Aerofly FS2 is luckily an exception, where it's easy to start your first flight (into the rather limited clouds): Steam --> download --> "plug and play". 

45 minutes ago, tonywob said:

I think it depends on what their ultimate goal is and which user base they are aiming for.

But it doesn't depend on that, FSW was supposed to be for entry level, AF2 is supposed to be for entry level ... and yet P3D and XP11 have no barriers for entry level and the commercial/professional/student/anyone doesn't matter (there is no one standing behind a user monitoring what they do) ... if you look at XP11 loading screen they claim "professional" ... that's really all just marketing.  P3D and XP11 have products that will provide tutorials for the beginners, anyone can pick an aircraft and location and just go fly,  the existing two platforms are accessible to everyone and anyone from the beginner to the expert.  The market is covered with P3D and XP11 ... you get entry level and so much more if and when a user wants to grow with it.

I'm not going to compare P3D and XP11, think that's been done enough already ... two great platforms with strengths and weaknesses.  Why the desire to try to keep re-inventing the same wheel under the illusion of some different type of market that is already a subset of a larger market?  It's taken decades to get to where this FS platforms are today.  If an  investor has a small budget regardless of developer talent, they're NOT going to make-up decades worth of design, software engineering, and 3rd party support in just a year or two regardless of their target audience.

And I'm not being negative, as you know I'm mostly very optimistic, but I'm also realistic and don't ignore what has happened and where we've been.  All this development talent needs to approach LR/LM and see if they can work something out (on the compensation side) ... that's where it will benefit the community and the developers, and the base FS platform.  Efforts like building of better SDK/PDK tools to help get projects done faster, or to incorporation small adjustments into the core engine to allow other operations to happen, nicer user interface, automated add-on installations directly from within the FS platform, seamless automatic updates, etc. etc..  But repeating work efforts is something the FS community doesn't need or want.

Cheers, Rob.

3 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

AF2 may not officially announce "retirement" but I'll be surprised if we see major growth in that platform any time soon.  Sure they've release a few airports/scenery and added a few aircraft, but relative to what's been released for XP11 and P3D those are MANY orders of magnitude higher (for every 1 location/airport in AF2, 150 locations/airports and 100+ aircraft are released for P3D).

Don't get me wrong, FSW and AF2 development teams did bring something better to the flight simulator world, but just not enough and incomplete relative to P3D/XP11.  Their programming talents/resources could have been put to better use.

^This.

These apps didn't/won't  fail for lack of trying. It's just that the bar has been set too high by XP11 and P3d4 combined. Neither XP11 and P3d4 is a perfect flight simulator, but between the two of them users envision what an ideal simulator would look like. No little cottage industry company is going to be able to duplicate that ideal, at least not in a time frame of a year or two. And no big player in the video game industry is going to try to create such a beast either, because the market on the PC just isn't there. AF2 may leap ahead at some point, just because some company releases a consumer VR headset with high resolution at a reasonable price. But let's hope that by then IPACS has added enough features to AF2 so that it isn't just a sightseeing simulator. As an aside here, I think ORBX wants AF2 to succeed and will put resources into its further development, but now that ORBX has caught the XP11 fever, they probably will stick with P3d4 and XP11 as their main markets.

So here we have the underlying argument for the status quo, essentially forever:

Nothing new will ever work, so all efforts should go into the existing sims, market and community. (status quo)

There are no other significant numbers of people interested in this market, so all efforts should be aimed at the already extant simulations. (status quo)

Developers can barely afford to support the existing sims as it is, so.... (status quo)

Besides, there's nobody with the money to really create something new, it's too expensive and time consuming so.... (status quo)

Well, yes..... there are new efforts out there, but given all that's been "established" above, they're obviously doomed, so don't pay much attention. Stay the course with what we have! (status quo)

And this is where I go "Hmmmmm....."

For my part, I've long believed that one of the main reasons FSW got any traction at all was that by using the FSX engine, it held out the prospect of people leveraging their years of existing software investment into a more modern platform. Developers would have been faced with only moderate alterations in their workflow to port things over, shovelware would be a thing, and the existing ecosystem wouldn't be faced with significant change. (Status quo, essentially)

DTG upset the applecart by wanting in on some of the money from third party sales to help pay for and support their investment in creating the sim in the first place, (not to mention continuing to expand it) which apparently marked them as greedy so and so's, because it's not the way it's been for quite some time, and apparently negotiation (if any!) was unsuccessful.....

It's a strange situation. It appears the only way for this community to exist (in its current form) is to either cannibalize the body(s) of previous sims created in better times, or find someone that just happens to be heading our way and hitch a free ride, since we have no desire nor patience for financing a new vehicle ourselves.....

Flyinside might just barely squeeze in a safe niche for itself by allowing people to leverage their FSX/P3D aircraft collections. (No threat)

Deadstick is such a different and deliberately limited concept that it will probably also be safe. (No threat)

Aerofly? I think of them like Laminar research. They're going to go along, doing their thing no matter what anyone says because like Austin, I think they believe in what they are doing and are determined to stick with it. They'll gather followers, and get sneered at just like X-plane was.... Until one day the sneering stops, or perhaps the effort fails and the forum can once again be flush with satisfied I-told-you-so's.

It seems to be our way. (shrugs)