Wondering why it takes so long, as an example, to develop the airbuses for P3D whereas I keep seeing new Airbuses, and many other aircraft for X Plane coming out must faster.

Any ideas?

Moderator: wasn't sure where to post this, so please move if necessary.

You're probably seeing quality versus quantity for a kick off. But also remember that P3D is a full-on nerd-fest flight sim, the existence of which isn't promoted that widely, whereas you can buy X-Plane on Steam in sales on a fairly regular basis.

Last year, Steam hit the landmark of having 1 billion registered users, with 90 million of those user accounts being regularly active. So if you fancied creating a plane for X-Plane (which itself is regularly promoted on Steam), this means your product is advertised to a potential 1 billion customers. That's a lot of incentive to do so for that sim, compared to making something for a flight sim lots of people have never even heard of and which is probably about to be seriously eclipsed by Microsoft's new flight sim too, which incidentally, I daresay those who were making Airbuses for P3D and indeed FSX, have now put on hold to await the arrival of that platform.

Though not an Airbus, but still a complex add-on, witness Just Flight's Boeing 747-100/200 they were/are developing. That thing was originally being touted for an expected release not last Christmas, but the Christmas before that! Yet it is suspiciously not nearing a release even now. Hmmm, I wonder why that might be?

Thank you Alan for such a great reply, never used X-Plane or seen it in action and assumed the aircraft complexity would be, if not the same, not far off that of P3D. The airports and other scenery I've seen on  screenshots looked pretty good and I guess that it made me think that X-Plane would be close of similar quality to P3D.

Best regards

 

 

As already stated, that is exactly why.  It takes way longer to develop a quality aircraft(FSLabs, PMDG) then it does to create one that simply flies but no where close to how the real thing would(Carenado).  If all you care about is that it looks like the actual plane, Carenado is probably good enough.  But if you expect the buttons and controls in the airplane to act like they would in real life, then you have to wait for that(and pay some more money).

20 minutes ago, ideoplastic said:

Thank you Alan for such a great reply, never used X-Plane or seen it in action and assumed the aircraft complexity would be, if not the same, not far off that of P3D. The airports and other scenery I've seen on  screenshots looked pretty good and I guess that it made me think that X-Plane would be close of similar quality to P3D.

Best regards

There are some fairly decent airliners for XPlane, but the problem is that utilities for simulation of the peripheral supporting infrastructure which you need to use those fancy airliners properly if you are after a level of impressive real world operational fidelity, is a bit hit and miss. By that I mean some decent ATC, some realistic realtime weather with seasons and such, good flight planners, take off calculators, etc. These kinds of utilities are in abundance for FSX and P3D, so there is the incentive for developers such as PMDG, FSL and Majestic etc to make really good airliners for the the MS, Dovetail and LM sims, and know that people who take that stuff seriously will be 'prepared' to cough up a reasonable sum for their efforts.

Edited February 14, 20206 yr by Chock

1 hour ago, klamal said:

....one that simply flies but no where close to how the real thing would(Carenado). 

Complete nonsense.

Edited February 14, 20206 yr by FDEdev

11 minutes ago, FDEdev said:

Complete nonsense.

IMO, completely true. Notice I added IMO!

1 minute ago, Adrian123 said:

IMO, completely true. Notice I added IMO!

You certainly are not the only one though, got enough of their rubbish to know what their quality is like !!

 

G

46 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

The Carenado's in XP do "feel" and seem to operate better than their counterparts in P3D but I'm not sure Carenado has fully utilized all aspects available to them in P3D out of trying to retain FSX compatibility.   But Carenado have utilized what's available to them in XP11.

I find that true also. At least being able to use "Beta Mode" in the SAAB 340. Never seem to get Beta working in FS?

16 hours ago, Gazzareth said:

got enough of their rubbish to know what their quality is like !!

Surprising then that you have more than one. No one with such a low opinion of Carenado aircraft and with the determination to do them down at every turn would surely buy a second. 

Their appearance is nothing less than superb. I have no idea and even less interest in whether they conform to the "numbers" or any definition of "study level". Those that I own "fly" well enough and seem to have no vices.

Not everyone wants or needs to replicate every tiny detail of real world practice and those who do should leave those who do not to their own devices and aircraft choices and of course vice versa. Carenado aircraft may not suit all tastes but then nor do complex airliners with every strand of fly by wire simulated either. However, they do not conform to the description of "rubbish".

Edited February 15, 20206 yr by Reader

17 minutes ago, Reader said:

Surprising then that you have more than one. No one with such a low opinion of Carenado aircraft and with the determination to do them down at every turn would surely buy a second. 

Their appearance is nothing less than superb. I have no idea and even less interest in whether they conform to the "numbers" or any definition of "study level". Those that I own "fly" well enough and seem to have no vices.

Not everyone wants or needs to replicate every tiny detail of real world practice and those who do should leave those who do not to their own devices and aircraft choices and of course vice versa. Carenado aircraft may not suit all tastes but then nor do complex airliners with every strand of fly by wire simulated either. However, they do not conform to the description of "rubbish".

Perhaps not for you, but for me and apparently quite a few other users they are extremely lacking in quality. 

Unfortunately for me there are not a lot of dev's making business jets (especially modern ones), which is what I fly pretty much exclusively, so I have tried Carenado over the years. Their 550 & PC12 (bought that in a moment of madness - don't regularly fly it) are not bad. Anything where they have tried to replicate more modern avionics (such as the PL21) though is not impressive at all. Which is why "community" mods appear to  remove their avionics and replace, normally with the GTN....

G

 

Thanks, I think that there is a large gap between a good looking and practical aircraft model and one that faithfully replicates every nuance of the onboard electronics. I agree absolutely that if an aircraft model fails to do this then it is less than perfect but to write it off as "rubbish" and "extremely lacking in quality" seems rather harsh.

 

1 hour ago, Gazzareth said:

Anything where they have tried to replicate more modern avionics (such as the PL21) though is not impressive at all. Which is why "community" mods appear to  remove their avionics and replace, normally with the GTN....

The problem is that many people are not distinguishing between the FDE and the systems and avionics. I agree that in the avionics and systems part of the simulation some of their aircraft can be incomplete and wrong, but again, I'm exclusively talking about the FDE. That's an area where most of their aircraft are definitely performing according to the published performance data.

1 hour ago, FDEdev said:

The problem is that many people are not distinguishing between the FDE and the systems and avionics. I agree that in the avionics and systems part of the simulation some of their aircraft can be incomplete and wrong, but again, I'm exclusively talking about the FDE. That's an area where most of their aircraft are definitely performing according to the published performance data.

Fair point, can't say I have really had a problem with the FDE in any particular aircraft, it is the systems I normally take issue with. It's a shame since the stuff they make looks great and is enjoyable to fly, but as you say systems are either incomplete or just plain wrong.

I'm almost certainly fussy with respect to systems, but that's just me, perhaps I'm looking for a niche within a niche. Had enough of buying stuff that doesn't live up to the standard I am looking for.

G

 

 

1 hour ago, Gazzareth said:

I'm almost certainly fussy with respect to systems, but that's just me, perhaps I'm looking for a niche within a niche. 

I don't think that you are fussy. It would be already sufficient if the systems/avionics would match their visuals and FDEs and I'm not even talking about very detailed or in depth systems simulations.  

Edited February 15, 20206 yr by FDEdev