Nail in coffin AFS2...?

[HiFlyer 9,343]

Just now, J van E said:

"The long term" doesn't sound good to me. Sounds like Orbx might look at things again when AFS2 is actually becoming a bigger player. Orbx isn't planning to invest too much money in it anymore. I also found it saying a lot that JV said :so please don't write it off just yet!" and not "so please don't write us (Orbx in AFS2) off just yet!" He may have hopes for the sim but he won't be the one making it all happen. While we ALL know we need 3rd party devs to make it all happen.

Glass half full/Glass half empty again. I took JV's statement on its face as a prudent business decision, You see other things.

Time will tell!

 

[Guest]

This one says it all! :

https://steamcharts.com/cmp/434030,314160,269950

I find the correlation between FSX Steam and X Plane 11 spooky!

OK, I get it. The peaks and troughs are day and night but it shows that there is also a geographic concentration of users otherwise those peaks and troughs would not be there. The dip on November 6th was when Flight simmers world wide where on the Prepar3D Website smashing there F5 key because I publicly and incorrectly predicted that V4.4 was going to be release on that day.🙄

 

On a more serious note I am surprise that many video gamers are interested in democracy!😁

Edited November 11, 2018 by Guest

[torium 207]

1 hour ago, J van E said:

So why come up with that old quote...? If someone changed his mind you won't change it back again by quoting an old remark that 'proves' that he didn't change his mind.

Of course, I'm not a mind reader - and therefore can not know what JV thinking. And IPACS may disappear tomorrow. It is impossible to know. But I see no signs that JV has abandon AFS2 - or "a 180 degree turnaround." 

As previously mentioned: A small team = slow development. In such a familiar context - Venema just pointing out the obvious (from a business point of view), quote: "Yes, I am on record saying our AFS2 efforts are a long-term R&D investment, and this has been ongoing for over two years now. However at some point the R&D has to pay back its investment and this has not been the case with AFS2. For that reason we have recently re-focused back to our core P3D platform and expanded into XP11 which has proven to be profitable in terms of units sold and the XP community embracing Orbx products."

This recent statement is consistent with what Venema said earlier, quote: "You must keep in mind that your continued support of P3D as our core platform makes it possible for us to spend R&D on XP and AFS2. If everyone abandoned P3D then that would pretty much stop development for AFS2 stone cold dead."

First priority, of course, is the revenue from P3D and XP11. As JV says, this is what allows them to invest for the future. It does not mean that Orbx has abandon AFS2. Or do you think that Orbx is now finished releasing new products for AFS2?

[tonywob 4,768]

2 hours ago, edpatino said:

There's a very extensive poll or survey going on (Navigraph, Carenado, etc., are sponsoring it) until Nov. 25 (date from memory). According to the survey, the results will be public by Dec. 17, 2018 and by then we will surely know more about the current market share of those simulators.

If this is the same survey Navigraph published last year then the survey would likely only be done by people who are aware of it or use Navigraph's products. Their customers are typically study-level aircraft users (or hardcore simmers), where the majority of these products run on P3D followed behind by X-Plane. Since there aren't any Navigraph products for Aerofly, the results would be pretty meaningless, and simply would be a survey of what sims Navigraph customers use. 

There are a lot of users we never hear from, who never post on forums, who probably just enjoy the default aircraft or one or two low-end addons. The userbase is probably bigger than we know, and really the only reliable way to get the real figures would be to have them from LM, LR and iPacs directly, which as far as I know, have never been published.

Edit: Poor JV, seems everything he posts is subject to detective work and lots of scrutiny 🙂

[edpatino 1,960]

1 minute ago, tonywob said:

If this is the same survey Navigraph published last year then the survey would likely only be done by people who are aware of it or use Navigraph's products. Their customers are typically study-level aircraft users (or hardcore simmers), where the majority of these products run on P3D followed behind by X-Plane. Since there aren't any Navigraph products for Aerofly, the results would be pretty meaningless, and simply would be a survey of what sims Navigraph customers use. 

There are a lot of users we never hear from, who never post on forums, who probably just enjoy the default aircraft or one or two low-end addons. The userbase is probably bigger than we know, and really the only reliable way to get the real figures would be to have them from LM, LR and iPacs directly, which as far as I know, have never been published.

 

Let me clarify for you that this survey is sponsored not only by Navigraph, but also by other developers or sim companies, according to the list below:

• Aerofly FS 2
• Alabeo
• Avitab
• CaptainSim
• Carenado
• Flight1
• FlightSim
• FSExpo
• HiFiSimTech
• IVAO
• JonFly
• Just Flight
• Laminar Research
• MilViz
• ORBX
• QualityWings
• SimBrief
• SimFlight
• VATSIM

And yes, to my surprise IPACS (Aerofly FS 2) is also sponsoring the survey.

Cheers, Ed

[tonywob 4,768]

Ah thanks Ed, then it's not the same survey that Navigraph alone did last year. So the results should be pretty interesting.

[HiFlyer 9,343]

30 minutes ago, tonywob said:

If this is the same survey Navigraph published last year then the survey would likely only be done by people who are aware of it or use Navigraph's products. Their customers are typically study-level aircraft users (or hardcore simmers), where the majority of these products run on P3D followed behind by X-Plane. Since there aren't any Navigraph products for Aerofly, the results would be pretty meaningless, and simply would be a survey of what sims Navigraph customers use. 

There are a lot of users we never hear from, who never post on forums, who probably just enjoy the default aircraft or one or two low-end addons. The userbase is probably bigger than we know, and really the only reliable way to get the real figures would be to have them from LM, LR and iPacs directly, which as far as I know, have never been published.

Edit: Poor JV, seems everything he posts is subject to detective work and lots of scrutiny 🙂

Hearing that aerofly is sponsoring is a surprise. It doesn't seem like their sort of thing. At all.

[HiFlyer 9,343]

I stand corrected: https://www.aerofly.com/community/forum/index.php?thread/13663-navigraph-flight-sim-community-survey/

[Pastaiolo 1,686]

Also interesting is the absence of Aerosoft and PMDG from it.

[Guest]

On 11/10/2018 at 4:04 PM, J van E said:

Quote from John Venema: "I spent a day in Germany with the IPACS team about six weeks ago and they showed me some pretty exciting stuff to come in the sim, so please don't write it off just yet!"

I decided to ask on the IPACS forum today when we, their beloved customers, would get to see some of that "pretty exciting stuff". Not to my surprise IPACS posted that they won't be sharing anything with their customers when it comes to what they are working on and what's coming.

Jan said this: "We prefer not to share anything of that "pretty exciting stuff" at this point so that it doesn't limit our future options. We are way more flexible when we don't yet publicly commit to this or that "stuff". From our experience too many users confuse a "we are currently working on this" with "this is what will be in the next update".

And Jeff said this: "I'm sorry but we aren't going down this road yet again. This is how we do business, and it works for us." after which the topic was locked (obviously).

So that's how important communication with their customers is to IPACS. They couldn't care less. I even find the part about "too many users confuse" a bit insulting. Such a shame. But well, apparently it's working for them... 😶

Luckily all of this didn't prevent me from having a nice short flight this afternoon in the Q400 in AFS2... 😉

Edited November 18, 2018 by Guest

[monica6211 173]

1 hour ago, J van E said:

I decided to ask on the IPACS forum today when we, their beloved customers, would get to see some of that "pretty exciting stuff". Not to my surprise IPACS posted that they won't be sharing anything with their customers when it comes to what they are working on and what's coming.

Jan said this: "We prefer not to share anything of that "pretty exciting stuff" at this point so that it doesn't limit our future options. We are way more flexible when we don't yet publicly commit to this or that "stuff". From our experience too many users confuse a "we are currently working on this" with "this is what will be in the next update".

And Jeff said this: "I'm sorry but we aren't going down this road yet again. This is how we do business, and it works for us." after which the topic was locked (obviously).

So that's how important communication with their customers is to IPACS. They couldn't care less. I even find the part about "too many users confuse" a bit insulting. Such a shame. But well, apparently it's working for them... 😶

Luckily all of this didn't prevent me from having a nice short flight this afternoon in the Q400 in AFS2... 😉

I totally understand why IPACS responded this way. I see this in the forums ALL the time. I feel it is the community's fault, NOT IPACS. Every time a publisher even mentions that they are working on something, everyone takes it as etched in stone that we will see it in the very near future, creating hundreds of posts asking "when it is going to be released", or "what's taking so long", or "but you said you are going to do this". When a developer gives an estimated date or time a feature or addon MAY be released, everyone starts complaining that "it hasn't been released yet", "you said it would be released by.....", or "why isn't it released yet, this is bad customer service". And we get upset when we don't hear from the developer every hour of every day with a status on their project, as if they all have someone dedicated to just responding to posts and giving full briefs on their daily tasks. I see this with almost every single developer and addon mentioned anywhere. No wonder why so many developers have turned to silence. Instead of treating them with respect and thanking them for what they plan on releasing, we attack them when something is "overdue" or we haven't heard from them enough. And some of the silence from developers stems from competition between developers as well. There are many developers who try to be the first with a totally new feature. By releasing details of that project may give other developers ideas that may overshadow what they are working on. And by not stopping what they are doing just to get on the forums every single day gives them ALOT more time to devote to completing their projects in a shorter amount of time.

We, as a community, need to stop and look at what we have become. We are impatient, inconsiderate, relentless, and downright vicious. We need to stop this, and start giving the developers more patience and respect. Maybe then we will start hearing more and seeing more from the developers. Let's start being more kind, and less aggressive. Kindness goes a long way.

.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

On 11/10/2018 at 10:49 AM, jabloomf1230 said:

I think JV's comments say more about ORBX than they do about AFS2. I get the impression from watching the ORBX strategy evolve over the past year that they don't have the capacity (both staffing and expertise) to cover their original expansive roadmap. The sudden demise of DTG FSW helped ORBX out a bit, but in my opinion, they seem hard pressed even to produce products for the ever evolving versions of P3d and XP. They were fine with FSX, but that sim never changed. Think about it, if P3d4 adds PBR, will ORBX update all it's products? We shall see.

 

Remember this post earlier in the thread? JV just started a thread on the official ORBX forum soliciting for  10+ new contract employees to help produce new products for XP11. One can either interpret this as either there is a big demand for XP add-ons or ORBX is now overwhelmed trying to cover 3 flightsim platforms. It's probably a little of both. But in any case, AF2 isn't going to get their full attention in the short term.

[tonywob 4,768]

23 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

JV just started a thread on the official ORBX forum soliciting for  10+ new contract employees to help produce new products for XP11

This is incorrect. ORBX are looking for people to help on the TrueEarth regions, and people who can convert airports to XP11

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

How is my statement incorrect? Are they not hiring new contractors? Are they not producing new products for XP11?

[tonywob 4,768]

46 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

How is my statement incorrect? Are they not hiring new contractors? Are they not producing new products for XP11?

Your statement implies they are taking on 10 people to make products solely for X-Plane. This is incorrect, they are taking people on to work on TrueEarth regions which could imply all 3 simulators (they don't mention the simulator). ORBX are also looking for people who can convert airports to XP11, and these are seperate tasks.