ACES Studio Member Responds to FSW Closure

[jarsky 12]

I may be alone in this thought, but I believe that social media can trivialize a product. I noticed that FSW's Facebook page had content quite heavily laden with DLC. It would be fatuous for me to say that selling a product makes obvious business sense; however, I found that the DLC focus clogged and detracted from that space in which to engage with the flight simulator and the act of flying itself. I prefer the use of forums for a more in-depth and a usually more balanced, content-driven approach.

On that note, I did not like the apparent emphasis on DLCs when the simulator was rather basic overall relative to, say, FSX, P3D and indeed XP10/11. Specifically, I didn't like the idea of paying for camera movements as a utility, when this function is native to FSX, P3D and XP10/11. I try to be balanced and measured in my words, but I still do not know whether FSW was intended to be FSX in a 64-bit environment or entirely new. It also did seem to be rather arcade-like; more like casual gameplay rather than the simulation I am accustomed to. But maybe FSW was not aiming at existing flight sim enthusiasts or IFR pilots but at newcomers and/or aviation enthusiasts more generally. I still find FSW very enigmatic, but I see that others have somewhat sustained interest in and development of MS:Flight. One good thing about social media and the Internet more generally is that is can foster collaboration, so I do wonder what may happen next.

[Longranger 148]

15 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

So, basically you're just speculating? No one outside of DTG actually knows what happened and IMHO it's wrong to try to give the impression that any of us have a genuine handle on what really caused FSW to be cancelled (unless you actually work for DTG, of course).

You don't know what you are talking about. If I would work for DTG I would be bound by my contract. There are always confidentiality clauses part of the contracts. As a software developer I often enough have to acknowledge NDAs.

In Europe we don't have such a hire and fire policy as in the US. In fact that might have been one of the main reasons why they did continue. If you fire a developer you still have to pay him for several months. And you can´t fire who you like and how you like, otherwise he will simply go to court.

And since I write for many years for magazines, I wouldn't be entitled to tell you my sources.

[vortex681 806]

13 hours ago, Longranger said:

And since I write for many years for magazines, I wouldn't be entitled to tell you my sources.

But without them, your opinions are no more valid than anyone else's. I'm not defending DTG but I think that it's unfair to blame them, or their business/employment practices, for the failure of FSW without verifiable evidence. Just saying that something is true doesn't make it so without evidence.

Edited May 15, 2018 by vortex681

[SmokeDiddy 262]

This is a good read.  Everyone basically has an opinion about one thing or another related to DTG FSW.  I guess I don't have an opinion one way or the other as to why, but I will say is that I am very disappointed to see FSW  be discontinued.  I was certainly hoping to see it become a mainstream sim.  I really liked the integration of features from A2A, ORBX and TruSky in one package.  Additionally, I really enjoyed the Mission Packs and Career Mode.

I can still think of the "what might have been" tho.  Nevertheless, I shall press on with P3Dv4 and XP11 for now.  The only thing that remains of FSW on my hard drive is a small greasy spot in the steamapps folder. ☹️

[pmb 5,137]

You all probably know, there's another new sim on the way (actually even two of them, but I'll only mention one here). It's Flyinside Flight Simulator.

 

 recently, they added clouds and released a video a couple of days ago. 

Think what you want.

Kind regards, Michael

Edited May 18, 2018 by 188AHC
Removed video links.

[fs4fun 366]

It's good to see some new sims coming online like DeadStick and Flyinside. I guess we're at the end of the line for MSFS. I was hopeful that DTG would rewrite and modernize the old sim and was looking forward to seeing how it turned out, but this evolutionary path turned into a dead end. With these new sims I hope to see fresh approaches to the genre and a product that actually looks and performs like it was made in 2018.

[Longranger 148]

8 hours ago, vortex681 said:

 I'm not defending DTG but I think that it's unfair to blame them,

DId you even read what I wrote? Where did I blame DTG. And most of those facts were publcily available. The only point where you could really blame them was that they totally forget to ask the 3rd parety developers, what they would need. But there were multple public exclamations by developers. They were totally stunned that they didn't know anything about their products.

They had to pay as many people as they did, since their competitors had a huge head start. When they bought the licence there wasn't even a competition. X-Plane 9 was in no position to really compete with FSX, even the first versions of X-Plane 10 had huge problems. And from the size of the company (3 full time employees + freelancers) it was ridiculous that they could compete with DTG. And P3D was at first nothing more than a nearly FSX with a few bug fixes.

They were a bit late to the party and believed that they had a huge number of potential customers on steam. They simply needed such a huge staff. The problem was: their team needed more time. Not a surprise, But the bigger the team the more expensive such delays .But X-Plane and P3D had cleaned their code. So they had fewer unexpected surprises and their development became faster and faster.

Their original plan was to shock this dormant market, according to Hood.But the competition shocked them. First X-Plane 11 and they didn't even have control when to release FSW. P3D had attracted so many developers and 64 Bit and dynamic lighting in P3D v4...

So what should they have done better? How should the management of DTG have foreseen this? Don't forget, we had nearly  complete access to their sales numbers.

If you have even the slightest grasp how much a dvelopment team costs it is obvious that they lost a huge amount of money, if we ignore FSX:SE since according to DTG this product was only part of the payment for the licence.

Edited May 15, 2018 by Longranger

[Kinetic2080 5]

I just found out about FSW stopping development.

From what I learn there are several reasons this failed.

I played FSW for a while because they offered something new: structured missions where you decide flightplan and get score, really liked it.

What I missed was:

* better graphics than fsx/orbx 

* more aircraft

* high detail geographic areas

the actual simulation felt good on my setup anyway, those GA planes handled well

To summarize: many good people, some from aces and those like Aimee in public relations did great.

I think the project could have needed a more detailed Roadmap .

However the reviews over at steam where pretty harsh! My sympathy to the OP reference at aces; if people didnt downvote fsw that bad on steam, then maybe the developers would have stayed with fsw for another round.

I hope the guys at the team can find other jobs quickly!

—-

[AAN1718A 20]

Wonder what the future is now for FSX:SE.

[Kinetic2080 5]

Me too, why isnt the fsw-team producing dlc for fsx-se now?

-

[Longranger 148]

3 hours ago, Kinetic2080 said:

Me too, why isnt the fsw-team producing dlc for fsx-se now?

It's not their program. They had to update it to more current windows systems but they had no rights to change it in any other way. I think at least a part of the money goes directly to Microsoft.

Why should they bother with it? The old code didn´t give them any capabilities that they didn´t have in their own code.. It was the foundation of their own code.

Edited May 18, 2018 by Longranger

[Kinetic2080 5]

14 hours ago, Longranger said:

It's not their program. They had to update it to more current windows systems but they had no rights to change it in any other way. I think at least a part of the money goes directly to Microsoft.

Why should they bother with it? The old code didn´t give them any capabilities that they didn´t have in their own code.. It was the foundation of their own code.

Dovetail can still profit , even if they cant develop the core sim they are allowed to make and sell DLC.

Their latest (third party) release was 15 may 2018.

I dont see why they couldnt hire aces or other to make som original dlc.

[Kinetic2080 5]

Update:

I've read up on the other discussions now (26 pages!)...

DTG games apparently had another business philosophy then making original DLC for FSX instead distributing other addon brands Caranedo, Active Sky and ORBX to name a few. 

FSW *was* their go at original content.

The discussion went was it FSW not allowing 3rd party or was it the community not embracing FSW's attempt that lead to it's failure, or even was FSW not a strong product.

After reading 26 pages in another thread... opinions are as many as the members on this forum almost and I'll leave it at that.

My idea that DTG could make original DLC for FSX (above) was a bit naive. I'm now better informed. I'll leave it a that.

There are many great people both in FSW team and in this forum! 😊

-

PS! I'm getting old , couldnt find the edit post button.. sorry for double post! 🙄

[n4gix 4,947]

2 hours ago, Kinetic2080 said:

PS! I'm getting old , couldnt find the edit post button.. sorry for double post! 🙄

It's not your age, it is because you only have a two hour window in which to make any edits. Your latest reply was just at the two hour expiration point!

[fs4fun 366]

On 5/22/2018 at 12:25 PM, Kinetic2080 said:

The discussion went was it FSW not allowing 3rd party or was it the community not embracing FSW's attempt that lead to it's failure, or even was FSW not a strong product.

 

We don't know because DTG killed the product without explanation. Third party development was allowed but few developers had shown any interest, largely due to the immaturity of the product and small user base.

FSW was an unfinished product which did not perform well in the marketplace because at the stage of development it had reached it was only of interest to the curious and early adopter crowd, it was not ready to be a replacement for any existing flight sim. FSW had a long way to go in terms of content and functionality before they could have expected to see strong growth in the user base.

And that's probably why they killed it now. They realized that development costs would be too high relative to the revenue they would be getting even if they finished it. Their original business plan was to take a large cut of DLC sales but they had to back away from that plan given the strongly negative developer and user reaction. DTG also had to pull developers off the FSW team for other products that were more likely to generate revenues, so the point at which they'd have a critical mass of functionality was moving further and further into the future. Killing FSW probably meant they could save a lot of money on licensing fees.