Farewell FSW

[A32xx 129]

13 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

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.

Hopefully so. And this motormouth "Froogle" sounds like a character from the Muppet Show, why anyone listens to these self-proclaimed "experts" is a mystery to me.

[tonywob 4,769]

2 hours ago, CaptCWGAllen said:

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"

This also likely includes the other tech they purchased or licensed, TrueSky, ORBX, A2A AccuFeel as well as the FSX license as well. Dovetail will carry on though with their train sims. 

14 minutes ago, A32xx said:

why anyone listens to these self-proclaimed "experts" is a mystery to me.

Does anyone know or can tell me who Froogle was in the community before he started running adverts?. He states he is a developer, but I don't recall seeing any products or made. I remember he once had a decent channel where he would review content, stream flights, do tutorials, but that seems to have died out now for a weekly news post.

[pmb 5,137]

52 minutes ago, A32xx said:

Recently quoted on the FSW Steam forum:

"Originally posted by Chris Trott:

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.

This statement may apply or not. But if it applies, Dovetail should have prepared for that community as it is in advance of closing the contract with MS - or stepped back at all. I followed the developmend of FSW and its forerunner projects from day 1. I am under the urgent impression DT - beginning with Early "Martin" Steam threads - didn't know how this community acts and didn't want to change in this respect up to the bitter end.

Kind regards, Michael

[A32xx 129]

5 minutes ago, pmb said:

I am under the urgent impression DT - beginning with Early "Martin" Steam threads - didn't know how this community acts and didn't want to change in this respect up to the bitter end.

I agree Michael, new products and new developers are greeted with a lot of cynicism.

Chris Trott followed up his earlier comments with this, point 2) is particularly poignant:

"...I don't try to change history to fit my narrative and I don't try to sugar coat that history.

1) Flight! failed because of decisions outside of what the basis of the program was. There was marketing alluding to it being a "game" but under the hood it was the same excellent program that ACES had put out for years. The biggest problem was the change about 90 days before release to push back the release of DX11 (and thus 64-bit) requiring a scramble to make a 32-bit only DX10 version (that wasn't originally planned) that eliminated the ability to finish a lot of its planned features. The other was the decision at the same time to make it a Live! store only title, something that no one on the team was aware of until that point. As a person within the first external BETA test team, it was a great disappointment to everyone involved (from ACES on) when that was announced because they were a small team (30 people) who didn't have the resources to pivot that quickly and do a good job.

2) DTG's business model on FSW was flawed yes, but much of what was widely "reported" was parroting of lies by one of the people mentioned in my original post. And they were (and are) lies. The misunderstanding of the original addon terms was quickly clarified by DTG very early on, but people latched onto that one person's statement and ignored the repeated attempts by DTG to stress that the original statement wasn't clear enough, what the plan was, and that it was just that - A PLAN. Nothing was ever set in stone."

[Guest]

1 hour ago, A32xx said:

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."

Sorry, but no, it's not our job to make a product work, that's DTG's responsibility.  Most of the DTG "bashing" didn't come from AVSIM, it came from it's own Steam forums, Reddit, and other forums.  DTG received far less criticism than P3D or XP and yet those are still around today (the early days of P3D V2.x got hammered with criticism, as did the "lighting" in XP prior to v11).  P3D and XP11 are still being hammered with criticism 24/7 and they always will be, welcome to Internet. 

I supported FSW with my wallet, just as I support P3D, XP11, AF2, DCS.  Did I have reservations about my support for FSW, absolutely, I saw danger signs all over the place with some of their decisions and I hoped I was wrong and continued to support them with my wallet.

I hope DTG doesn't actually believe the "community" is "at fault", if so, it's just more evidence of why DTG failed to deliver.  Anyway, like you said, they had a few original ACEs devs that I hope will want to continue to contribute elsewhere if not under DTG.  I'm trying to look at the good that might come out of this, opportunity to learn and not repeat mistakes.

Cheers, Rob.

[A32xx 129]

4 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

I hope DTG doesn't actually believe the "community" is "at fault", if so, it's just more evidence of why DTG failed to deliver.  Anyway, like you said, they had a few original ACEs devs that I hope will want to continue to contribute elsewhere if not under DTG.

No-one is blaming AVSIM Rob, and I didn't make any of these statements, Chris Trott did on Froogle's site.

Chris Trott maintains that some of DTG's competitors for the FSX licence are at fault, and by implication, those individuals within the "community" who believed them.

[vortex681 806]

I often find Froogle's vlogs quite interesting and his comments generally fair but I think his rant on Sunday (29 Apr 18) was very biased and often inaccurate. He states in the video (at around 7 minutes) that DTG had "zero experience in flight simulation", but in a reply to Chris Trott's comments below the video he says "I'm well aware former members of Aces were involved with this project" - zero experience in flight simulation???  At the very least, then, his comments in the video were misleading if not a deliberate lie to make his case. I remember his early comments about FSW when it was first released which were very negative and he hadn't even tried it at the time (like many of those who criticised it). When he did subsequently try it (in his vlog on 11 Jan 18), he said that it looked "pretty damned good - I'm eating my words as I speak". This really doesn't fit in with the tone of his comments on Sunday which were generally that it was doomed to fail from the start. Since its release, there have been some quite bitter rants about FSW and DTG from high profile people in the flight sim world which, given what we now know, possibly need to be seen in context and taken with a pinch of salt. I can't help thinking that no matter how good FSW could have become (and it did have a lot of potential), some in the industry would still have felt the need to attack it on principle. There are always two sides to every story like this and, unless we hear both of them it's not possible to come to a balanced opinion about what really happened.

As an aside, Froogle mentions that he's involved in a project that he can't talk about at the moment. It would be very revealing if it turned out to be another flight sim which would have competed with FSW.

Edited April 30, 2018 by vortex681

[n4gix 4,947]

4 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

There are always two sides to every story like this and, unless we hear both of them it's not possible to come to a balanced opinion about what really happened.

Oh, at least two sides! More like, many, many sides. I'm reminded of the old saying that if you have any three rabbi's in a "discussion" you will likely have at least seven opinions being promoted...

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

In Roman mythology, Janus is god of beginnings and endings. Janus is usually portrayed as having two faces, since according to Wikipedia, he looks to both the future and the past. I've always thought that 3rd party flight sim developers worship Janus as their god, in more ways than one. The developer community seems to welcome new flight sim platforms as a potential new market. But at the same time, the same developers passive aggressively snipe at new flight sims, probably because supporting multiple platforms increases their workload. Take ORBX as an example. They took shots at XP11 (some say the vendetta was personal) and when AFS2 was introduced, they jumped onto the AFS2 bandwagon, at a level of enthusiasm that was substantially out of proportion IMO to the potential of that flight sim. I always took that  initial "bias" towards AFS2 on the part of ORBX as a way of getting even with LR. ORBX simultaneously made vague noises about supporting FSW ... just enough to make the user base think that ORBX was serious, but not enough to ever show any viable progress towards that same goal. eventually, ORBX realized that they had to support XP11. It wouldn't shock me that ORBX had some inside information regarding the demise of FSW and that was enough for JV to bury the hatchet with AM.

But to blame the users and the developer community for the train wreck that was FSW is completely ignoring the main cause, which was DTG itself.

[WotanUK 289]

21 minutes ago, A32xx said:

No-one is blaming AVSIM Rob, and I didn't make any of these statements, Chris Trott did on Froogle's site.

Chris Trott maintains that some of DTG's competitors for the FSX licence are at fault, and by implication, those individuals within the "community" who believed them.

I really don't get this line of thought at all...some Youtuber called Nova..something made the exact point you mention above, he directly calls out both PMDG and the wider community; but nobody is backing this up with any facts and i'll confess it's beginning to annoy me.  Firstly assuming that Novamouth is correct and RSR simply hated DTG, why should PMDG have supported FSW??  It's RSRs company, it's his choice what is supported and the implication of this is that Novamouth is stating that PMDG decide the fate of simulator companies...rather conveniently forgetting that PMDG don't support (save a single aircraft) XP either, also either forgetting or willfully leaving out that absolutely nobody produced any high fidelity aircraft for FSW...if you believe certain people it might have been down to the FSW SDK not supporting the C gauges that are used...so if that is case PMDG couldn't have produced any aircraft for it.

As for the community, what are these people expecting?  They gave us a stripped down version of FSX, which many of us (me included) bought anyway and then produced some (i'll be generous) not interesting DLCs then decided that they have had enough and pulled out of the market.

Simply put, the only people to blame for FSWs demise is DTG, not the community, not PMDG, not Aerosoft.  Anybody saying otherwise should have to answer the questions i have posed above.

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, A32xx said:

Chris Trott maintains that some of DTG's competitors for the FSX licence are at fault

If a development group makes what the community wants, they (users) will follow.  If DTG or anyone wants to know the "magic" equation to success, it really is a simple one to "think" about:

1.  Needs to look like GTA V or FC5 on a global scale
2.  Needs to support all existing content users have paid for
3.  Needs to operate at 60 FPS on a laptop or 5 year old hardware at max graphics settings
4.  Needs to support every single possible button, knob, switch dial, flight computer of the most complex aircraft available today or yesterday
5.  Needs auto start to just fly
6.  Needs to update/install with a single click of a button and everything will be made compatible (even add-ons that are 32bit and 10 years old)
7.  Needs to be a wealth of high quality freeware

Do that, and one's platform will succeed and dominate.

25 minutes ago, n4gix said:

Oh, at least two sides! More like, many, many sides.

Does that include transdimensional sides? 🙂

IMHO, whatever the side, more doing, less finger pointing is the way forward.

Cheers, Rob.

[vortex681 806]

19 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

But to blame the users and the developer community for the train wreck that was FSW is completely ignoring the main cause, which was DTG itself.

The community may not have directly caused the demise of FSW but, apart from those few who bought the sim, they certainly didn't help it at all. Many of the biggest critics of FSW didn't even have it!

16 minutes ago, WotanUK said:

rather conveniently forgetting that PMDG don't support (save a single aircraft) XP either

But, equally, they don't go out of their way to criticise it. Remember that the PMDG DC-6 was released for X-Plane before the other platforms which certainly shows tentative support for the sim.

Edited April 30, 2018 by vortex681

[WotanUK 289]

2 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

The community may not have directly caused the demise of FSW but, apart from those few who bought the sim, they certainly didn't help it at all. Many of the biggest critics of FSW didn't even have it!

But, equally, they don't go out of their way to criticise it.

Eh?  The people on here may not have purchased it, but the people leaving the MANY negative reviews on Steam have it.  I bought FSW, used it, was throughly underwelmed by it but decided not to refund because of what it might become, what i saw after that was a procession of uninteresting mission DLCs and Aircraft that are practically indistingishable from one another.

I have never seen RSR directly criticise the FSW platform, but the business practice of DTG, he based this on facts, like Steam taking 30% and DTG taking 30%, yes this may have changed towards the end, but this was the practice at the start, it wasn't just RSR saying this, it has also been mentioned by Aerosoft and Milviz.  Incidently, this same practice is well known to the Train Sim community, who have very similar complaints regarding DTG, but no other real choice in the sim market, we should be grateful that we have.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, tonywob said:

Does anyone know or can tell me who Froogle was in the community before he started running adverts?. He states he is a developer, but I don't recall seeing any products or made.

Froogle (Pete) has indicated he's a journalist, and has often made it clear he is not a developer.  Maybe that has changed and/or the usage of "developer" means something else, developers aren't always software engineers and within the "software engineering field" there are many specialized (they have to be due to the technical requirements) disciplines as it's close to impossible for a single developer to be productive in ALL areas of potential "coding" paradigms.  Like Doctors, they vary considerably from GP to a Brain surgeon.

I don't subscribe to Froogle any more as we had a disagreement where he tried to dragged LM into the fray, so I don't have any reference point after unsubscribed.  But to be fair to Froogle, his early reviews of FS (before it became FSW), he was clear with DTG that he did NOT want to do the review until more product was complete.  However, Froogle put his best foot forward and displayed the positive aspects and skipped over some of the issues ... that was a few years ago.  I don't think Froogle is of sufficient "status" (only 68K subscribes, maybe if he were over 1 Million subscribers) to make or break any flight simulator product ... I don't think PMDG are of sufficient status to do that either ... I don't believe anyone is to be honest.

With that said, I'm going to remain positive that some good will come out of this.

Cheers, Rob.

[DrumsArt 270]

8 minutes ago, torium said:

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."

Lol, in the FSW case a good open product even unfinished will have the success and support it deserves. Clearly Dovetail made a huge mistake on this side thinking that enlightened users would support a totally closed product when compared to P3Dv4, XP 11 and yes even Fsx !

Of course the reason FSW died is because Dovetail "management" and of course I don't include the talented developers in this rout !

Regards,