What I expect in a next gen sim

[b737800 470]

I'd like to see much of what has been listed in a new sim. However many of them wouldn't be at all appealing to the masses. Most people will just want to fly and, perhaps with the odd exception of trying ground handling and cargo loading once or twice to see how it works, for example, wouldn't use it again and wouldn't really care if it was there or not. They certainly wouldn't pay any extra for it.

Hence most of this stuff is for the 3PDs to provide us, which hopefully is a positive because they can devote the time and attention necessary to really do it in depth once they are provided the correct tools. For that reason, I hope MS will make the SDK truly complete, as then we can have pretty much anything we want.

[Chock 17,769]

2 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

You forgot "emptying the human waste tanks", Alan. Absolutely essential in a next generation flight simulator.

Mmm, the Honey wagon. You know, however much those guys who operate that thing get paid, it isn't enough. In summer when you're working even anywhere near that truck, the smell is atrocious. So, for some extra realism, if anyone ever does a walkaround in avatar mode on their sim, just leave your toilet door open in your house after someone has been 'struggling' with the aftermath of a Vindaloo, and you will experience an entirely new level of the feeling of 'being there' in your sim.

In all seriousness though, all those suggestions I made were more in the nature of a suggestion as to how the developers should be thinking rather than a specific list of what I'd demand to see, so if an SDK is made which facilitates doing that kind of thing, then great. With a few caveats....

But as far as making all of that sort of thing the remit for TPDs is concerned, that is as I recall, one of the problems which led to MS closing down Aces, in that MS initially made a few quid off selling the sim, but then the extended revenue stream which is the TPD add-on market, was not the money-maker for MS that it was for other companies. Their way around that was of course to bang out an new version of FS approximately every two years, supplementing that with the funds from developer licenses, but it was why subscription-based models were mooted.

Dovetail touched on an interesting potential solution to that with the stillborn FSW, in choosing to heavily include the work of TPDs in the base program, and that might be an interesting approach for MS to take, perhaps striking deals with TPDS to include popular add-ons in each subsequent two-yearly update for maybe an optional extra subscription fee.

I dunno, it might be something worth considering for them, after all, MS are no longer making much money off FSX sales, since it came out in 2006, but many people are still buying add-ons for it, so others are indeed making money from it fourteen years after MS had got the thing out the door. I know it's not cool for us flight simmers to have sympathised with MS when they made that decision to close Aces, but frankly, I could see their point, even though it was just as bitter a pill for me to swallow as for anyone else.

We know that some voices from influential TPDs, loudly eschewing the potential sales models Dovetail were mooting in order to allow them to reap some continued rewards from their efforts (in particular one which makes a well known Jumbo-sized airliner add on), were fundamental in hammering some big nails into FSW's coffin, so it's as well to be aware that some TPDs are not always the 'friends to simmers', or even other TPDs if some of the stuff I've heard is true, that many like to imagine they always are.

Edited February 12, 2020 by Chock