The little guys will be fine for some time.  Whoever said "At least 7 months away" is pretty optimistic.  I would wager holidays 2020, just in time for Christmas.  That is more like 18 months away.  Way too far off to get too excited for me, but hey, it got me back in these forums after a 4 year vacation from flightsimming!  I started MSFS in 1987 and have owned them all.   P3D never did it for me so I flipped to the XP10 side for a few years hoping that something new would eventually come back around from MS.  Looks like a game changer if , in fact, it is a simulator.  Apparently not even alpha tested yet so it will be quite a wait.

14 minutes ago, shivers9 said:

All that has happened is that MS said " guys...look at this shinny coin.

....that we have been developing for 5 years

2 hours ago, Lorby_SI said:

OK. But local scenery just doesn't make sense mathematically. Why use and openly quote 2 Petabytes of GIS data when it is then compressed for example by a factor of 1000 - still leaving a 2 TByte download and probably severely compromising the visual quality?

Streaming is the solution of choice for this requirement. Buffered, layered, streamed in small chunks at a time. That still doesn't prove that they will do it that way of course.

Those MS flight sims have always been resource hungry, leaving some customers behind. It may just be a different resource this time. But since it is supposed to run on the XBox hardware, MS will have the right answer for that.

On that last point, it's designed for the "Scarlett" Xbox that will release at the end of the year 2020. MSFS along with Halo will be the showcase products for Scarlett, so I imagine they'll push all the stops, really stress that hardware. It's something you can do on a console that isn't possible on a PC-only title, where you have to be able to sell to people with a wider range of hardware, including lower-spec machines.

From the early info on the specs for Scarlett, I suspect many of us will have to upgrade our PC's to match it. I know my current system (specs below) sure can't run 4K at that high a frame rate, let alone do ray tracing.

This is a good thing, of course. We don't get advancements in the simulated world of flight sims without developments that take advantage of the latest hardware. 'Twas ever thus. My CPU and RAM are probably okay for a while yet, but I do need a GPU upgrade. This MSFS news is making me think about going for something higher up the food chain of graphics cards than I was originally planning. 

Edited June 12, 20196 yr by Paraffin

Please dont castrate me, but

If i was Microsoft, and could see that add-ons can go over £100(!) for 1 plane(!) its easy to see how they would want to jump on this market.

Now, those greedy developers -(i don't care how good it is, the prices are just plain greedy...end of. And bearing in mind, when we ask for a plane, we don't get it, we get what THEY took  upon themselves to develop. So what if it took years,....why am i being punished for that via the price tag?)- want to moan n groan MS are trying to take food off there table because theres a possibility they'll get shut out.

 

With that said, i still hope thats not the case...i hope 3rd parties are welcomed with open arms.....but as a business, and with the above 'moneys' in mind,...money talks.

 

 

 

9 minutes ago, domkle said:

But I don't like the timing of the announcement because I don't want all the little guys go under.

Even the iPhone took a few years to kill the blackberry so no one is going under anytime soon bc of this.  

PMDG knew nothing about this. I doubt FSLabs was involved so it really seems like day 0 “study level” tube liners we are accustomed too won’t be there which means if this is the sim of the future there will be a transition. If it sucks, then no one needs to worry.

If the SDK is good then in the long run we could have a winner for the hardcore community.

 

1 hour ago, CarlHill said:

The little guys will be fine for some time.  Whoever said "At least 7 months away" is pretty optimistic.  I would wager holidays 2020, just in time for Christmas.  That is more like 18 months away.  Way too far off to get too excited for me, but hey, it got me back in these forums after a 4 year vacation from flightsimming!  I started MSFS in 1987 and have owned them all.   P3D never did it for me so I flipped to the XP10 side for a few years hoping that something new would eventually come back around from MS.  Looks like a game changer if , in fact, it is a simulator.  Apparently not even alpha tested yet so it will be quite a wait.

You may be right on the timeline.  

Insiders in the profession say that the addons market has been shrinking over the past few years (except maybe for a few devs). If it is true and if there are a lot of sales delayed, little guys will suffer. Look at these forums people saying I won't buy anything before knowing more. Very normal reactions. They are Microsoft.  And that may last until the Xmas season or much further in 2020.

 

Edited June 12, 20196 yr by domkle

I just observed the "Forum" entry on

https://fsi.microsoftstudios.com/insider-program-sign-up/

did get a "Coming soon" question mark, which wasn't there in the beginning. So there *might* be a possibility to more directly communicate with the crew in the future. I only hope this will be a two-way dialog, contrary to what Dovetail offered us once. 

Kind regards, Michael

4 minutes ago, TravelRunner404 said:

 

If the SDK is good then in the long run we could have a winner for the hardcore community.

 

Correction : if there is a SDK 😃 (crossing the fingers) ! 

4 hours ago, FlyingRoo said:

Not sure if you've seen this already but PMDG released an official statement

https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/general-discussion-news-and-announcements/14257-12jun19-pmdg-and-the-microsoft-flight-simulator-2020-question

 

to me,

Mr. RSR is begging MS for SDK to be released with MSFS 2020 so he can sell me the same PMDG product for the fifth time with a higher price.

1 hour ago, Luke said:

As a software author, I wouldn't mind if Microsoft took a slightly smaller cut than some of the current vendors and relieved me of the burden of custom installers, update code and a bunch of other distractions that really should be common.

Agreed! I wouldn't mind that approach either. It would be very nice, if a store was added with all the addons for purchase. But most (like, really most) developers would be running away screaming, at such a construction...

58 minutes ago, france89 said:

In the lower part of his statement he is sort of giving the idea that Microsoft is jumping in to make money, while apparently PMDG is a charity doing its things for the greater good.

Where does he indicate any such iterations??? I seriously think, you're over-analyzing this!

6 minutes ago, Anders Bermann said:

Agreed! I wouldn't mind that approach either. It would be very nice, if a store was added with all the addons for purchase. But most (like, really most) developers would be running away screaming, at such a construction...

Why would "most" developers run away?
The majority of them use Simmarket, Aerosoft, PCAviator, FS Pilot Shop, Just Flight, Flight1, etc. and are used to paying a considerable fee for using them as their distribution channels. 
Even the developers with their own store option have to pay a payment handling agent (which won't be cheap either).

I agree, something similar to Steam where I can buy / have for free, download, install and automatically update all in one place will be a massive improvement over what we have now.
 

1 hour ago, part_time_punk said:

Did Mr PMDG just describe us as a herd of stampeding cattle?

Not even remotely surprising.  That particular dev thinks their products are God's gift to the community.  I have to say, the attitude of some developers in this community is really off-putting.  Makes me not want to do business with them.  

1 hour ago, eslader said:

They're right - if Microsoft decides to wall this thing off, then it's a failure. Even if it's a commercial success, to core simmers it's a failure, because walled off general simulators mean you're relying on one company to act as the gatekeeper between you and what you want out of the sim.

I won't pretend to have a definitive read on PMDG and their views but I get the feeling they aren't very accommodating to the change.  Current developers do have a bit of a luxury right now in that they can invest and develop a plane using P3D and from my understanding pay $0 in royalties.  I feel if we want stability their has to be a balance.  Studios like MS or whoever else develops a flight sim can't simply invest millions of dollars into something, sell it for $60 and let everyone else come in and profit as they see fit on their work and investment.  A large studio who develops a base sim also can't act like things don't need to go both ways.  If you want to put your PMDG plane in a sim where people will buy it because they can also look out the window and see incredible real-world scenery then you have to pay the person who created that content that helped you make money off that plane.  MS also needs to understand that the scenery doesn't have as much value without a great plane.  Give and take.  Chicken or the egg type stuff.  Again, I don't know PMDG's full story and thinking, but that message seems a little like, give us free reign to profit off your sim however we want because that's how it's done or you will fail.  In the end, the simmer loses if either side takes that stance but it's their business and their bottom line.  I do get that.

8 minutes ago, F737NG said:

Why would "most" developers run away?
The majority of them use Simmarket, Aerosoft, PCAviator, FS Pilot Shop, Just Flight, Flight1, etc. and are used to paying a considerable fee for using them as their distribution channels. 
Even the developers with their own store option have to pay a payment handling agent (which won't be cheap either).

Not to mention some of the products that take up multiple gigabytes of space, we often hear about bandwidth costs. When FlightSimStore went down, I was "generously" offered to pay a $15 fee to have my purchase of FS Global Ultimate moved over to SimMarket. The fee was due to bandwidth and handling. That wouldn't exactly be a problem if this was hosted and served by large, credible digital stores. (Oh and I didn't pay the fee, so my $80 purchase is down the toilet).

Edited June 12, 20196 yr by Sethos1988

1 hour ago, ckyliu said:

(for example asking PMDG repeatedly to do a 757 when the CS P3D one is basically PMDG standard)

Yeah, for $200 or more because they nickel and dime you with every variant, and I think some might argue about CS being "basically" PMDG standard.

1 hour ago, Woozie said:

Everyone does this, even PMDG announce their products several months before they get released

But no one says "wait, PMDG's making a new 737. I'm gonna stop buying *anything* sim-related until it's out!"

You can bet that with this announcement products like Active Sky, Rex, add-on ATC's, and, of course, add-on airplanes and scenery are going to see demand drop off a cliff.

1 hour ago, vortex681 said:

Whilst I feel sorry for those people who've had problems (and have been VERY vocal about them), the vast majority haven't.

"As long as it doesn't happen to me, everything's fine" has never held much sway with me.

 

46 minutes ago, MaDDogz said:

So what if it took years,....why am i being punished for that via the price tag?

Do you work for free? If your boss came up to you and said "Hey, I need you to work for free for the next few months, cool?" would you go along with it? Then why do you expect add-on developers to work for free? Those years of development represent years of salaries that have to be paid. And it's not like we're talking about a volume market here - there's money to be made in sim addons, but it's from a small subset of the global population. If PMDG/etc could sell their addons to millions of people then they could reduce their prices. But even if they reduced the price of a plane to $5, that wouldn't cause people who don't care about flight simulation to buy it. Price something that's sold to a small number of people at a low number and you have to choose between hiring good developers and not giving them enough time to do the work, or hiring less skilled developers. In other words, Carenado. Their planes are a lot cheaper, and their sucky systems reflect that, but I'm not looking for them to rise to PMDG's level because then they will have to charge PMDG prices and that will price a lot of people out of their planes.