1 hour ago, TechguyMaxC said:

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.  

This will certainly be upsetting a few "Road maps" (you know; the blessed announcements they occasionally see fit to dangle in front of our hungry little eyes from time to time) by certain Devs.

I say good. Give them something to think about. They've had it their way for too long. Just look at the prices over the last couple of years. Want a decent Airbus and a couple of Boeings and a few decent SEPs and Vintage and some nice places to fly them; not much change from $1000. Ridiculous, for what at the end of the day is a game (I know, I know, it's not a game...)

I say Go Microsoft!!! - reclaim the streets (and skies).

16 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

I was just wondering how this would work. I can understand the whole subscribe-to-use-the-flight sim model, but if you paid separately for DLC, surely that would still technically be yours even if you stopped subscribing to the sim (not that you'd be able to use it, of course)?

In this case, the thought is that most everything needed to run the program will reside on our computer, but we will need the cloud servers for the scenery processing and streaming.

7 minutes ago, HighTowers said:

The amicable solution is to have your own DLC and 3rd party be it free or paid.  Its not hard to look at other simulator title genres to see the success is from having a central store like on farm simulator , and having all kinds of mods from the community as well as 3rd party plus their own DLC.   Discuss it diplomatically instead of having sour taste in your mouth for so long which seems what PMDG is getting at.   Who knows. This may be a whole different group with a different attitude than what was Flights business model.  Im sure they observe other simulator title business models too and where the success is at. 

That was my point. PMDG is already taking some conclusions towards Microsoft and demanding a totally open SDK without even knowing which terms would Microsoft demand to seal a partnership.

The SDK should be totally open for freeware devs, but comercial ones should have to talk with the Simulator Developer.

Edited June 12, 20196 yr by ca_metal

Hi @ll,

It has been posted before, but I just read through the whole article, and I can really recommend it. Puts things into perspective when keeping in mind that the the new MSFS is a part of that whole strategy, and what the people behind that strategy are thinking. For example the part where Mr. Booty gets asked "How do you position xCloud relative to Project Scarlett?"

Quote

So, content, community, cloud. I think they’re all intertwined. <snip> The center of gravity is Game Pass, which is going to be your outlet for discovering games, the place where <Edit: we?> curate games for you.

https://venturebeat.com/2019/06/12/how-microsoft-showed-up-at-e3-locked-and-loaded-for-games-a-new-console-and-the-cloud/

Best regards

Edited June 12, 20196 yr by Lorby_SI

1 hour ago, Sethos1988 said:

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.

Handling.

Anyone who tells you that bandwidth and storage is expensive is taking advantage of you. Storage at retail prices is just over $0.02/GB, and bandwidth is around $0.08/GB.

Cheers!

11 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

Yeah Microsoft must know that also. What I'm criticizing is Randazzo's attitude saying they want it their way or they are out. They aren't open for negotiation. That says a lot to me.

I'm not totally disagreeing with you, both Microsoft and 3rd need parties each other, but it's not good when you start saying you want your way or the highway. They did the "same" with Dovetail back in 2016. If Microsoft needs the partners to be on their store, why not negociate the terms? They don't even know the terms as they were not contacted and he is already demanding a totally open SDK enviroment.

I think Microsoft has the right to choose their partners, the same way PMDG has to choose theirs. 

Indeed, there is going to have to be some room to negotiate or the developer is going to be locked out and done.

MS will say: "We are open to third party developers, here are the terms."

Will there be any room at MS for each developer to negotiate their own contracts? Who knows.

Hopefully MS won't be too hard nosed and show some amount of flexibility. I suppose it would depend on the quality of the third party product and if MS deems that it will elevate their own product.

This all assumes that MS will require all commercial developers to use their portal for sales. We just don't have that information yet.

Just now, Luke said:

Handling.

Anyone who tells you that bandwidth and storage is expensive is taking advantage of you. Storage at retail prices is just over $0.02/GB, and bandwidth is around $0.08/GB.

Cheers!

Oh I'm well aware and $15 for 'handling' is just as absurd in this case. However, it was the fact that I was given a limited amount of time to decide, basically putting a proverbial gun to my head to decide. Just left a very bad taste in my mouth.

1 minute ago, Luke said:

Anyone who tells you that bandwidth and storage is expensive is taking advantage of you. Storage at retail prices is just over $0.02/GB, and bandwidth is around $0.08/GB.

That's end-user cost spread over a huge number of customers, not what it takes to run the service. Try pricing out the cost of a server farm, the space to house it, the HVAC and electricity, and the salaries of technicians to keep everything running smoothly. Microsoft might operate their own cloud service but it still costs money to run, and they'll want to make a profit.

There is a reason why Blizzard charges $15 a month to play World of Warcraft, and most MOO's that try free access with in-game loot purchase are failures.

1 minute ago, Paraffin said:

That's end-user cost spread over a huge number of customers, not what it takes to run the service. Try pricing out the cost of a server farm, the space to house it, the HVAC and electricity, and the salaries of technicians to keep everything running smoothly.

My point that if you can get storage/bandwidth at rock-bottom prices because they are so amortized why would you do it yourself and pay far more? There is no reason for anyone to be paying more than pennies a gig.

Cheers!

I think addon aircraft and local airports should be injected locally, and sold by addon independent devs, and the globe with ortho, physics, sea, land, mesh should be streamed from azure with a cache.

There is always going to be a demand for add-ons and a $$$ making opportunity.  We have members of the community who believe they are real airline captains and need their air conditioning systems modeled to perfection.  As for me, I am happy with the new eye candy, a realistic flight model, functioning avionics and accurate scenery. If this has those things out of the box, I'm good to go.  It already appears to look better than P3D or XP11 with $100s of dollars of add-ons. My days of spending $50-60 for multiple incarnations of regional jets and turbo props are long over. Same can be said for all of the $30-50 airports I have purchased over the years.  I'll buy a KCLT and KGSP if available and a CRJ-200 and be set for a number of years.

19 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

That was my point. PMDG is already taking some conclusions towards Microsoft and demanding a totally open SDK without even knowing which terms would Microsoft demand to seal a partnership.

The SDK should be totally open for freeware devs, but comercial ones should have to talk with the Simulator Developer.

Agreed. And I further predict the likes of PMDG will be going, cap in hand, to the doors of MS saying; "Let us in...please!"

 

Everyone's had a go with the SDK - me included but MS is about to show us a new generation of FS that I'm confident will blow everything and everyone out of the water and quite possibly up to at least FL380!

 

After all, they did it before and goodness knows, they've had the mistakes to learn from.

 

Edited June 12, 20196 yr by Guest

1 minute ago, CarlHill said:

There is always going to be a demand for add-ons and a $$$ making opportunity.  We have members of the community who believe they are real airline captains and need their air conditioning systems modeled to perfection.  As for me, I am happy with the new eye candy, a realistic flight model, functioning avionics and accurate scenery. If this has those things out of the box, I'm good to go.  It already appears to look better than P3D or XP11 with $100s of dollars of add-ons. My days of spending $50-60 for multiple incarnations of regional jets and turbo props are long over. Same can be said for all of the $30-50 airports I have purchased over the years.  I'll buy a KCLT and KGSP if available and a CRJ-200 and be set for a number of years.

Oh, and forgot realistic weather for once in our lifetime.  Snow and rain have been horrible since FSX.  XP not much better.

Users will use and stay with a Simulator were 3rd party developers are able to provide their products.

If the MS 2019 SDK and methods to deliver content are too awkward and complicated, developers will stay with XP and P3D, leaving users with only the default product content.

If that was the case, would that be enough for users to keep using it? Maybe, we will see but my experience tells me users would buy it for curiosity and return back to the simulator were they can use their favorite addons.

For example, I would hate to fly without GSX and my preferred AI traffic, I would get bored of such nice looks if the immersion experience is missing.

I hope MS understand this, however they are quite popular for living in their own bubble and ignoring users needs.

Simbol 

35 minutes ago, Lorby_SI said:

It never is. You are paying for a license to use it. Theoretically indefinitely, but in practice only for the warranty period. If the licensor goes away, that is tough luck.

Owning a piece of software means having the intellectual property rights, the source code and the means to compile the working product.

Best regards

 

Thanks for that, but it was more the distinction between paying periodically for something versus making a one-off payment that interested me (I must be really bored today!).