Development of new aircraft

[Ricardo41 5,949]

On 2/14/2020 at 5:38 PM, klamal said:

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

Have you flown the "real thing" to be able to evaluate how the Carenado biz jets perform in comparison? I'd be happy to consider an alternative if you could point me to one. What I do see falls short in many ways. It all comes down to the fact that Carenado is currently the only developer to make modern avionics biz jets. The Flight1 Mustang is long in the tooth. 

[klamal 282]

4 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

Have you flown the "real thing" to be able to evaluate how the Carenado biz jets perform in comparison? I'd be happy to consider an alternative if you could point me to one. What I do see falls short in many ways. It all comes down to the fact that Carenado is currently the only developer to make modern avionics biz jets. The Flight1 Mustang is long in the tooth. 

Just because Carenado is the only “game in town” for any particular aircraft doesn’t make it good. If it fits your needs, great!

Consider yourself lucky that the little things don’t matter to you. For me, I want to know that an aircraft I’m flying in my virtual world replicates the real thing as close to is humanly possible in a simulation. Does that mean that the likes of FSLabs or PMDG are EXACTLY spot on themselves? No. Absolutely not! But I trust that they are a heck of a lot closer and more capable to do so than Carenado by a LONG SHOT!!! And that matters to me!

As to the have I flown the real thing argument? No, like 99% of us on here, we are all pretending. Most of us here have never flown a real airplane ourselves. Instead, We are all putting our trust in said developers to give us the closest representation to the real thing as possible. And, as is evidence by the overwhelming statements about this not working and that not working about any Carenado product and them requiring work from people here to fix their bugs to get them at least somewhat better, I have NO trust in Carenado to deliver on that! As has been stated many times before too, they are pretty pixels that just fly in the most basic sense. So it all comes down to TRUST. Flying every airplane in real life to compare is not possible.

[Lorby_SI 2,038]

On 2/14/2020 at 5:02 PM, ideoplastic said:

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 mean, as in "is it harder to develop for P3D than it is for XP"? I don't think so.

An airliner project consists of many different tasks: external 3D modelling and animations, internal 3D modelling and animations, external and internal texturing, sound design, flight dynamics and instruments/systems programming (those two are intertwined). All 3D design and paint related tasks require pretty much the same effort on every platform you do it for. In most cases the developers will even use the same tools. That leaves FDE and the systems simulation as the actual differentiating factor when it comes to effort. But I don't think that there are massive differences - one aspect may be easier to implement on one platform and seemingly (or actually) impossible on the other - but it will be the other way around for other aspects. So the total effort is probably about the same, give or take-

That IMO leaves only the obvious difference -  how much effort will the developer put into the result - how many people are working on it - and can you even compare the results, are they to the same level of fidelity and accuracy, do they have the same features.

Looking at the development times and what little information the developers share, it seems like the probable effort to make a mostly complete "study level" simulation of an airliner is around 50.000 hours (10 people working 3 years full time - or 5 people working 6 years - etc.). Which sounds like A LOT to me. But since no developer is actually telling their total effort, this is just guesswork. But let us assume that the number is correct - that means that a single guy working on an addon airliner would need 30 years to produce the same result - assuming that he is equally proficient in all tasks at hand, bascially 5 high-level development skillsets rolled into one. Which also implies that 2 guys working on an airliner for 5 years will only achieve a fraction of the fidelity that a bigger company could. If they tried to create the same result, they would need 15 years (again, if between the two of them they have an equal skillset that a group of specialized engineers/designers would have). 

Edit: another number for comparison: at the rumoured team size of 160 people, Microsoft is investing 270.000 hours of manpower in a single year into the development of MSFS. So 50.000 hours for a study level plane doesn't seem that far off after all?

Best regards

 

Edited February 17, 2020 by Lorby_SI

[JB3DG 225]

Neither sim is adequate in and of itself when it comes to systems and FDE. As such, all your high end developers end up making much of the systems platform independent, ie custom physics engines etc, and only the user interface is dependent on the platform. Both are pretty complex tasks for a high end addon, and the teams are actually smaller than you might think. A large team can actually slow the process down unless properly organized (a very difficult task itself), especially in the programming department. MJC for example has only 2 programmers if I recall correct for their q400, and the Aerosoft CRJ had only one. Both took at least 10 years. Milviz has only a few programmers split up over several of their commercial military projects, although the KingAir team is larger. VRS has only 3 or 4 members, only one of which is full time. PMDG and FSLabs are probably on the larger side, but still smaller than a full on gaming studio.