January 16th, 2020 - Development/Insider Update

[stevphfeniey 56]

Personally I'm hoping PMDG gets some stiff competition in the heavy metal department. Good for the hobby, good for the consumer.

[Krakin 5,744]

I absolutely agree that 3PDs can make more detailed aircraft......As long as Asobo chooses to do nothing for a few years lol. Asobo can do much more in a lot less time. 

[skully 1,045]

My most anticipated ports to the new sim is the excellent Leonardo Mad Dog and Carenado 421 Golden Eagle / Piper Cheyenne II.

These three are the aircraft I pretty much flew exclusively in P3D.

[vortex681 806]

1 hour ago, bonchie said:

I think some can (I can see PMDG and A2A spending money to meet those high bars), but a lot of other more volume driven developers who've made a living shovels out sub-par products (Carenado comes to mind) will have issues going forward. 

But that's been the situation for many years - some devs are much better than others. The main thing which I think has held developers back so far (even the best) has been the capabilities of the sim (and the SDK) rather than their own skills and imagination.

With regards to Asobo's ability to produce aircraft, what we don't yet know is how good they really are. They certainly look good but do they have the systems depth and functionality that independent devs can add to the equation. Carenado has generally been a good example of this. Their aircraft usually look amazing but it's only when you start to dig around in the detail that you realise that it's mostly eye candy. Until we can try the release version of the sim, and talk about it publicly, we've really got no way of knowing.

Edited January 21, 2020 by vortex681

[jlund 380]

1 hour ago, Wobbie said:

Come on guys, not EVERY developer went the so called 'perfect' PMDG route, & the same will happen with MSFS.

Not every simmer wants that kind of quality or will be prepared to pay PMDG prices.

There will be a bit of everything for everybody, even freeware! 

Excactly. If I can programme a route from A to B with SIDS/STARS or import from external flightplanners like Simbrief,I will be more than pleased. I don't need failures or however deep the systems are in some addon aircrafts.AND if developers  (you know who I'm thinking about) keep charging insane prices for their addons, I'm sure a lot of people (me especially) will be more than satisfied with what the default aircrafts delivers.

[Casualcas 830]

Dont confuse quality with content. They are two different things. I want quality,  but don't care about failures, wear and tear, changing batteries. 

All my flight planning, weight and balance is done before I get in the plane.

[jlund 380]

OK, what do you mean by quality that you don't think MS/Asobo can deliver with default airplanes?

[bonchie 2,305]

1 hour ago, vortex681 said:

But that's been the situation for many years - some devs are much better than others. The main thing which I think has held developers back so far (even the best) has been the capabilities of the sim (and the SDK) rather than their own skills and imagination.

With regards to Asobo's ability to produce aircraft, what we don't yet know is how good they really are. They certainly look good but do they have the systems depth and functionality that independent devs can add to the equation. Carenado has generally been a good example of this. Their aircraft usually look amazing but it's only when you start to dig around in the detail that you realise that it's mostly eye candy. Until we can try the release version of the sim, and talk about it publicly, we've really got no way of knowing.

I'm struggling to imagine Asobo going through as much trouble as they are going through with the flight model, sound, and visuals only to do a half job on the avionics and systems. We'll see. 

[Carts85 1,203]

If I’ve learnt anything in the last few months it’s to not underestimate what this Asobo team can do. They have the resources and the incentive to dominate the add on market in my opinion. Let’s not forget this is a 10 year venture. I don’t think they are going to spend there time just tinkering and adding butterflies.

Edited January 21, 2020 by Carts85

[vortex681 806]

1 hour ago, jlund said:

OK, what do you mean by quality that you don't think MS/Asobo can deliver with default airplanes?

But we don't actually know, in any detail, what Asobo can produce, only that it looks good. The fact remains, though, that no matter how good they are, they will only provide a small number which leaves the vast majority of aircraft for 3rd party devs to produce.

[ca_metal 2,015]

30 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

But we don't actually know, in any detail, what Asobo can produce, only that it looks good. The fact remains, though, that no matter how good they are, they will only provide a small number which leaves the vast majority of aircraft for 3rd party devs to produce.

Like you said, we don't actually know, but some people believe on their word (that the aircrafts will be as real as possible). You have to remember they have partenered with the manufacturers and they are getting feedback from their testing pilots, so we should expect a high degree of accuracy from that. I'm one of those believing in it, that the A320 FMS will work as intended and I will be able to do a flight from A to B with no issues (bugs).

I think no one needs they cover 100% of the aircraft models still flying around the world, but the ones they decide to develop should work as intended, including their avionics. I believe faillures will be a thing on the default planes also (they've already shown the icing effects on one of the videos). The other extra features like maintenance procedures would be just a plus to me, if they decide to implement some economic aspects/career mode on the simulator.

Edited January 21, 2020 by ca_metal

[MatthewS 761]

PMDG have nothing to worry about.

The level of systems detail PMDG can offer in their 747 will far exceed Asobo's default 747.  

Yeah I know, tell me again how Asobo has 100 staff busily beavering away. How many of those staff are doing actual dev work, probably no more than 30, and how many are actually implementing the 747 systems? Probably only 1? And to what level of detail? It will be some "lite" implementation of the Autopilot and FMS, not much more.

I bet when Asobo actually shows the default 747 cockpit in action (if they even dare to show more than a 5 second glimpse) there will be dozens of "errors" in the implementation of the PFD/ND.

You guys are dreaming if you think you're getting PMDG detail in Asobo's default 747.

All IMHO of course.

[orchestra_nl 925]

1 hour ago, ca_metal said:

I think no one needs they cover 100% of the aircraft models still flying around the world, but the ones they decide to develop should work as intended, including their avionics. I believe faillures will be a thing on the default planes also (they've already shown the icing effects on one of the videos). The other extra features like maintenance procedures would be just a plus to me, if they decide to implement some economic aspects/career mode on the simulator.

We've already heard that landing hard sounds different than a smooth landing. I'd like to see some wear and tear if an aircraft isn't flown by the numbers, but off course others couldn't care less. In my opinion, it would be both instructive and fun if that was modeled.

Regarding other aspects of realism, I think that Asobo is at least trying to make the aircraft as real as possible. maybe not study level, but most of it at least. I am optimistic that the aircraft will behave quite close to their real world counterparts and I hope that at least the GA aircraft are exact avionics wise.
For the more complex aircraft I think the defaults it will be much better than what we had in FSX but whether it will be on par with the likes of PMDG remains to be seen. At least the visuals as well as flight behaviour should be at least similar but perhaps even better than the current PDMG aicraft for P3D/FSX.

[jlund 380]

MatthewS, it's not difficult to see that you're a die hard PMDG fan, and that's allright, but no one has ever said they expect the default planes to be "study level" which by the way is a term that not even real world pilots will ever use of a PC game. What they have said and what we can expect is systems that uses SIDS/STARS, which means we can navigate from A to B in a realistic way. And when have you seen ANY aircraft that at release didn't have errors, flaws or needed fixes / updates,, so maybe (probably) the default will as well, and so what.

[RALF9636 1,920]

I hope we can finally get rid of that obscure term "study level" - whatever that means - and use "default standard" instead, because the default aircraft will define the new standard of excellence.