Be careful what you wish for: a cautionary note

[simbol 5,832]

1 hour ago, mr340 said:

A little something like what PMDG did with the latest NGXU, buy it now until December 31st and you'll get 100 dollars discount on the NG3 for MFS2020.  That's a good deal to me , I wish other developers take notes and wish they would do the same for any add on they plan to release for p3d.  

We have no SDK to be able to make such promises. Do you want me to lie?

As soon as I get hands on such, and I can see what it can be done, then I am happy to make such statements. And before you wonder.. nobody has an SDK 😉.

S.

[Arklight1 140]

I'm watching MSFS 2020 with reserved excitment.

 

The new trailer that came out today was released by their XBOX division (I'm assuming?).

 

I have high hopes for it, but something tells me that "accessibility" will be trumping realism in this next iteration of our beloved simulator. Hope I'm wrong. 

Edited November 15, 2019 by Arklight1

[mr340 56]

1 minute ago, simbol said:

We have no SDK to be able to make such promises. Do you want me to lie?

As soon as I get hands on such, and I can see what it can be done, then I am happy to make such statements. And before you wonder.. nobody has an SDK 😉.

S.

Ohh I didn't know that . Then why or how did PMDG manage to make this promise for their future products ? Base on their response to the community about MFS2020 I would've guess that other developers had access to the SDK also. 

[simbol 5,832]

4 minutes ago, mr340 said:

Ohh I didn't know that . Then why or how did PMDG manage to make this promise for their future products ? Base on their response to the community about MFS2020 I would've guess that other developers had access to the SDK also. 

Nope.. I am under NDA with MS. So I am sure they don't have it either 😉.

I can't comment on why on earth they promised that...

Simbol 

[ZKOKQ 986]

4 minutes ago, mr340 said:

Ohh I didn't know that . Then why or how did PMDG manage to make this promise for their future products ? Base on their response to the community about MFS2020 I would've guess that other developers had access to the SDK also. 

Yes, but PMDG made a half baked promise for X Plane. They either have the SDK or taking a punt.

You raised a valid point all the same.

[mr340 56]

8 minutes ago, simbol said:

Nope.. I am under NDA with MS. So I am sure they don't have it either 😉.

I can't comment on why on earth they promised that...

Simbol 

Wawo that's something new . I should start coming here more often good information are always spread on forums also bad once but I'm here for the goods once. 🙂

Edited November 15, 2019 by mr340

[simbol 5,832]

Think about it guys.. do you think MS will keep quiet and not make a big announcement that it has released a SDK for 3rd party developers? the SDK is clearly stated on their development roadmap, we are not there yet..

S.

 

[mr340 56]

4 minutes ago, ZKOKQ said:

Yes, but PMDG made a half baked promise for X Plane. They either have the SDK or taking a punt.

You raised a valid point all the same.

Well I don't think they would risk their good reliable reputation to promise such a thing and then not accomplish that promise. I paid for the NGXU just because of that promise they made . Lot of users would be extremely disappointed if they didn't live up to that promise. 

[JoeFackel 760]

54 minutes ago, simbol said:

I can't comment on why on earth they promised that...

I guess as one of the big players in FSX addon developement they had a meeting with Asobo to get an closer insight. Not that they got an SDK or something similiar in advance, but i can imagine they got a better insight than others.

[fta2017 160]

23 hours ago, ErichB said:

My take on the situation after a good few months have passed,  is that only users are seemingly excited and upbeat about MFS.  I haven't yet seen many developers exuding the same enthusiasm about it.  

That can only mean one, or all of a few things (1) although MS have constantly been telling everyone that third party development is core to MFS, the developers are still pretty much in the dark about what that means.  (2) Microsoft is probably not sharing any specific information about an SDK or given any specific details about when one will be available or (3) developers do know something, but are gagged by NDA. 

However, reading the post above, it does not seem like it is the latter option and from a developers point of view, I can see that this is hugely disconcerting.   That is slightly concerning.   Although I am sure that over time things will develop for the benefit of all, I would have hoped that developers would have been more significantly engaged at this stage.

As for the PMDG announcement that they are fully committed to MFS only, I can now see with hindsight, that they may not have been privy to any specific information about MFS, but just used tactical marketing to keep the revenue stream flowing for P3D.  Oh well, such is life....

 

You have hit the nail on the head with this. I know several people from some of the larger developers in this FS community and MS have not given them anything at all, not even a hint as to when an SDK will come, no early access to any tech alpha, no clarity on how they can sell their addons for the new MSFS or what margins MS will take - nothing at all.

Meantime MS's marketing team are doing a (admittedly superb) job of releasing a constant flow of information to the simming community, blowing us away with incredible trailers and screenshots and causing rivers of salivation all over the world. But they are actually going to give a build to the community before any developers get to use it!!! That is such a shortsighted and harmful thing to do the the developer community who has basically carried this hobby for the past decade.

So this has the effect of creating a lot of hype and demand for the new sim whilst at the same time leaving both small and large developers out in the cold without giving them the 12-24 months lead time to learn a new SDK, help debug the ineviatable problems with the SDK and tools and build a product pipeline so they have content ready for the release window.

This is what Cruachan's OP was all about. This is a difficult period for 3rd party developers because their very existence is under threat. And don't think it will not affect the big companies like PMDG, A2A, ORBX, Aerosoft etc. Just because they are big does not mean they can just continue to pay their 30/50/80/100 staff they have all over the world. In fact, the bigger a developer is, the more I suspect their business is threatened in a major way right now. Small independant developers will actually be more resilient because in most cases making FS addons is not their day job so they have a plan B to fall back onto.

Now think about companies like REX and HiFi Simulations whose businesses have effectively been shut down overnight by all these incredible weather and environment videos MS has released. What hope do they have of selling cloud and weather engine addons for MSFS now? Unless they completely reinvent themselves by moving into other types of addons or just redeploying their staff to work on different non-FS software, they are in real danger of disappearing very quickly.

 

1 hour ago, mr340 said:

Ohh I didn't know that . Then why or how did PMDG manage to make this promise for their future products ? Base on their response to the community about MFS2020 I would've guess that other developers had access to the SDK also. 

This is a vexxing question too. Why would PMDG make such announcements about a commitment to MSFS without even seeing an early build or having access to an SDK, or know if Simconnect works or if there is even an API they can hook into for their custom FM and systems code? I can bet that Randazzo is a bit red-faced today after seeing MS announce a partnership with Boeing and showing an amazing 747-8 aircraft in the new sim. He's likely quite furious at the situation because yet again MS are undermining a long establish developer who is probably still completely in the dark about the new sim. PMDG have forged a partnership with Boeing over many decades yet MS just walks down the road, shakes their hands and have Boeing endorsed aircraft now.

 

Finally, we should think about what is being shown by MS in their videos. They are being very selective in terms of only showing photogrammetry cities, of which Jorg Neumann today told IGN there are only "400 or so". He then also said there are "1.5 million cities globally" but conveniently none of them have been shown without the nice photogrammetry (I think only London has been but they cleverly only showed it at near-dusk without revealing the lack of 3D data).

Meantime there is a wave of euphoria worldwide from simmers who are being mis-led by MS into thinking the whole world is going to look like these photogrammetry cities when in fact it will be a much less compelling experience for 99.5% of the planet. So this selective marketing is harming companies like Drezweicki Design, FlyTampa, Orbx etc who have built a catalog of products which specifically build out realistic 3D fully modeled cities. By only showing the photogrammetry cities MS is creating a false expectation whilst at the same time creating doubt in the current FS community buying market that such products are now redundant and those companies won't be able to add such content to the new sim.

Yes we all appreciate and recognise that MS created the flight simulator genre in the first place, but be wary of this giant 1trillion dollar company they have become .. they are making all the right noises the community wants to hear and see, but are leaving the developers completely in the dark. And that is NOT a good thing for anyone. Except maybe MS.

Edited November 15, 2019 by fta2017

[honanhal 1,427]

2 hours ago, Speedbird 217 said:

[Outstanding and very well written post]

Wow, it's like you read my mind about everything, and then wrote it all down perfectly and infinitely better than I could have. 😉

[ZKOKQ 986]

13 minutes ago, honanhal said:

Wow, it's like you read my mind about everything, and then wrote it all down perfectly and infinitely better than I could have. 😉

Certainly hit the nail on the head. Should be pinned

[simbol 5,832]

29 minutes ago, fta2017 said:

Now think about companies like REX and HiFi Simulations whose businesses have effectively been shut down overnight by all these incredible weather and environment videos MS has released. What hope do they have of selling cloud and weather engine addons for MSFS now? Unless they completely reinvent themselves by moving into other types of addons or just redeploying their staff to work on different non-FS software, they are in real danger of disappearing very quickly.

But.. in my personal view.. MS is showing how nice the clouds and weather can be "rendered". It doesn't mean companies like REX or HiFi cannot connect to such weather engine and inject their well establish knowledge over all these year for real time weather depiction. Or even make the rendering better now the base engine is more capable. What warranties MS is going to be as accurate as these 3rd developers? remember when FSX was out.. it had the option for "real time" weather.. and it did.. but it was never as good as 3rd party tools. Or how otehr 3rd party developers made raining to look more realistic as the base sim.. and what about how now you can see water splashes on the tarmac under P3D thanks to 3rd party content ideas?

One advantage of 3rd party developers is that we can and "Focus" on one particular area, and we will exploit and push that particular area with lots of passion and detail. Pushing to the limits of what any platform can do, we push until we break it!. In the other hand base platform developers (MS, Laminar Research, Lockheed Martin, etc.) needs to cover a much vast area of the simulator, and inevitably it has to take things as far as it is practical for them in order to move their developing resources to another area. As an example, I watched the video of the 747-8 last night.. withing 30 seconds I could see over 10 things I would improve.. one of them, it seems it was missing wing-flex as when it was cruising as the tip of the wings were pointing down..

So there will be always space for 3rd party developers to make improvements. Not matter what we developed.. just have a look at the "what we want" thread in the MS2020 forums.. it shows how much new stuff people wants, there is not way MS can do it all.. it is impossible.

Issue is, we don't know what can be done until we see the SDK 😉. This is the biggest concern of all.. and people seem to forget without tools and collaboration..such thing cannot happen. We are not talking here about forcing people to keep buying VHS for God sake.. the correct alignment would be.. blue ray is coming, can you please share with the movie industry how to prepare our content for it please? instead of leaving us in the dark? otherwise you will find nobody will use blue ray..

Regards,
Simbol

 

 

Edited November 15, 2019 by simbol

[Paul Golding 92]

1 hour ago, mr340 said:

Ohh I didn't know that . Then why or how did PMDG manage to make this promise for their future products ? Base on their response to the community about MFS2020 I would've guess that other developers had access to the SDK also. 

Think about it.  They (along with others of course) are well known for charging full price for what some think are just port overs from previous versions.....I know a lot of the time these aren't port overs and any developer is within their rights to charge what they like and whenever they like, that's not the point.

They've spent considerable time on the newest NGXU, and most likely a lot of that time without even knowing that MSFS was on the horizon and now it's finally ready to sell (the NGXU), they're faced with the prospect of poor sales because of people waiting for their new sim, and even worse (assuming the SDK is OK and a developer can release a new product for MSFS in a timely manner), having to pay full price within a year or so for the same product in this new sim.

Whether they can or will release the product for MSFS is irrelevant (they may well not), but the fact that we know that if they do, we don't have to pay full price again so quickly is the cherry that ensures current sales aren't affected.

In the meantime, we get to spend money on a nice new add-on to use for as long as we want to use P3D for.  And no, none of us are "investing" in our sim, we spend money on our hobby in the same way as a golfer doesn't invest in golf club fee's (yeah, golf clubs themselves may be an investment as they do have a realisable value...…..unlike our FS add-ons).

[swiesma 625]

I handle the situation like this:

If there is a new Addon for P3D - I'll buy it.

As long as there is no ETA for MSFS2020 and no benachmarks/specs available I'll go with P3D. And before buying any addons for MSFS2020 I guess I'll have to invest in a 3950X and a 2080ti (or two) to enjoy MSFS2020 as in the advertising-videos.