1 minute ago, Wobbie said:

FSX:SE will not be further 'tweaked", & further development is frozen...So nothing will be added!

Dovetail Games currently have no plans to release any further updates, but will continue to support FSX: Steam Edition and its community so if it becomes necessary to release any more updates.

Bottom Line:

If you want any improvements to FSX:SE.. you have to buy them from 3rd party vendors!

That statement is from 2.5 years ago, when the plans of DTG were to freeze FSX and to develop FSW.

Plans are not set in stone, and given how things went with FSW, their plans could change.

 

Well, how many times did Microsoft update FSX? Only once, before closing ACES down.

Why should DTG add additional extra's & features, taking away business from developers that are already doing such business?

DTG should stick to their core business of fishing & train sims.

I would prefer the future of PC flight simulation (with the exception of P3D) to have nothing to do with Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Chris, there are a few out there, XP-11, FlightGear etc.

I do agree with you, the Microsoft sim core is very old & dated. But it is still amongst the most popular.

31 minutes ago, Wobbie said:

Why should DTG add additional extra's & features, taking away business from developers that are already doing such business?

That was not the point of my post. I was mainly thinking about DTG modifying and improving FSX (say, its visual engine. weather system, etc.) now that FSW has closed down.

Maybe they could implement some of the good features developed for FSW into FSX instead.

 

OK, but according to their license agreement, they have done all they are licensed to do with FSX as such. 

Their agreement for FSW allowed them to change, modify & otherwise do improvement stuff with that particular software core.

So, DTG had 2 separate licenses. FSW, as we know it from DTG is dead, with an alleged expired license. 

1 hour ago, Murmur said:

That was not the point of my post. I was mainly thinking about DTG modifying and improving FSX (say, its visual engine. weather system, etc.) now that FSW has closed down.

Maybe they could implement some of the good features developed for FSW into FSX instead.

Maybe they could but that would mean re-negotiating the terms of their existing contract with Microsoft for FSX Steam; in other words, paying out more money.

I would suggest they probably have little stomach for that.

Edited May 4, 20188 yr by chelmo

4 minutes ago, chelmo said:

Maybe they could but that would mean re-negotiating the terms of their existing contact with Microsoft for FSX Steam; in other words, paying out more money.

I would suggest they probably have little stomach for that.

Quite probable. But I wonder what does their license allow them to do with FSX:SE. Can they bundle improvements and new features with the base product? Can they make modifications to FSX shaders? To what extent can they modify its core code? (They fixed bugs, so the license evidently allowed modifications to the core code).

Whatever Dovetails future plans are I don`t think they will let use know given the reception they got from the community before releasing a product.    

Edited May 4, 20188 yr by rjfry

3 hours ago, Murmur said:

That was not the point of my post. I was mainly thinking about DTG modifying and improving FSX (say, its visual engine. weather system, etc.) now that FSW has closed down.

Maybe they could implement some of the good features developed for FSW into FSX instead.

The trouble with that idea, is that any significant improvement would probably affect backwards compatibility with existing addons. It's the huge number of existing addons that are keeping FSX on life support, and providing at least some income for DTG as the distributor. They won't want to mess with that, even if the license allowed it. People will keep buying FSX:SE for a while yet. It's a guaranteed income stream in its current state, creaky as it is.

Dealing with backwards compatibility while still improving the sim, is the dance that both LM and LR have been performing lately. They're breaking backwards compatibility in small increments the users can handle, in order to keep P3D and XP moving forward with new features. It can be rough at times -- like XP users having to re-buy their Carenado planes for XP11 -- but it's the only way you get a continually improving flight sim.

Any new developer that licensed the code from MS would have to solve this same puzzle. Or else truly start from scratch, in which case they don't need to license anything.

Edited May 4, 20188 yr by Paraffin

Considering that MS is moving heavily to business, the cloud, etc. any licensing fees, costs have to be minimal income considering their business model. Do us a favour MS - quit holding on to this franchise like the family jewels and give it to the community as open source. 

MS has been the same with what was to be their next version of Train Simulator. Looked really good. Then they pulled the plug. Selfish ingrates. Open source this stuff because I didn't see anyone rushing to purchase a license for the next version of TS. And as long as you have the incompetence of DT's FSW handling as an exhibit a platform this long in the tooth needs to be freed. from the shackles.

 

55 minutes ago, Lenny777 said:

Do us a favour MS - quit holding on to this franchise like the family jewels and give it to the community as open source

+1. This is something I was advocating before DTG came along, and at this point the MSFS franchise has truly been milked to death and it would be great if MS open sourced it (along with the SDK tools and 3D model source files).

Just think what the community could potentially do if FSX code would be made public. Look at what BMS did with Falcon 4.

 

Edited May 4, 20188 yr by Murmur

I think we all ought to know Microsoft better by now.

52 minutes ago, Murmur said:

Just think what the community could potentially do if FSX code would be made public. Look at what BMS did with Falcon 4.

Not trying to be negative here, but Falcon 4 didn't have the problem of needing a bootstrap from 32-bit to 64-bit code. 

DTG and P3D proved that it can be done, but it's the first hurdle any newcomer would have to tackle, to make the sim relevant in 2018+. There is no market for another 32-bit version of FSX, because you can already buy that for a pittance on Steam.

OOMs when crammed with add-ons has to be the #1 complaint of FSX users at this point, and it was the Golden Apple that DTG was using to entice users.