Possiblity of community involvement in world improvement?

[Tuskin38 6,451]

3 hours ago, rhumbaflappy said:

And yet you continue to state addons would be 'vetted' which is another word for censored or restricted.

Only ones included in the base game for everyone. Ones you can buy/download outside of the sim obviously wouldn't be.

  

4 hours ago, Wobbie said:

So why have community added scenery into the core, as suggested, when any & community developed scenery can be out there as payware or scenery to be chosen by us? I'm sure payware devs would want to be compensated for their time & effort. Doing scenery for free, does make it into a virtual free-for-all. 

So everyone can have stock up to date airports without having to look for them.

You keep assuming I'm asking for payware quality scenery to be added to the base game, I'm not, I'm asking for scenery would be made using the same assets the Devs use to make the less detailed airports. No custom models or textures, only assets already in the files. I'm not asking for anything amazing, just up to date layouts and parking spots.

If a player wants to buy a higher quality payware replacement they can still do that.

Edited April 14, 2020 by Tuskin38

[JonP01 104]

13 hours ago, Tuskin38 said:

Noob never said they should get paid for it

Yes they did because they said:

"Perhaps the community members can push a change to the world and the devs or someone at the MSFS team can approve the changes"

They are all paid professionals in the team.

 

 

[tweekz 2,165]

On 4/13/2020 at 7:14 AM, JonP01 said:

And you will fund that 30,000 hour per year job how exactly?

X-Plane is doing exactly that. I am sure they are not the kind of company that throws money out the window. The way I experience it, it's like a community project. Some people with reputation are allowed to judge the sceneries.

Edited April 14, 2020 by tweekz

[noob123 57]

3 hours ago, JonP01 said:

Yes they did because they said:

"Perhaps the community members can push a change to the world and the devs or someone at the MSFS team can approve the changes"

They are all paid professionals in the team.

 

 

Tuskin is right. I never said those pushing the changes will get paid. Of course the MSFS devs are getting paid, that's not a question. X-Plane devs do it, I don't see why Asobo wouldn't either. 

[noob123 57]

On 4/13/2020 at 3:34 AM, Wobbie said:

So, noob123 is suggesting that someone creates an airport, sends it to Asobo for approval, gets paid for it, & the airport is incorporated into the sim, for download.. What about those that have already download the game? & how much will Asobo pay & how much will the size of the download grow each time the core is added to?

 

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the sim works. I never said they are getting paid for it, also the sim works by streaming scenery rather than downloading it locally. The size of the downloaded game will not grow because the world and all its updates are being streamed through cloud computers. The streamed world will be continually update anyways, due to Bing improvements, so having manual intervention in certain areas will benefit all users of the core sim

[Gulfstream 416]

16 hours ago, Wobbie said:

So why have community added scenery into the core, as suggested, when any & community developed scenery can be out there as payware or scenery to be chosen by us? I'm sure payware devs would want to be compensated for their time & effort. Doing scenery for free, does make it into a virtual free-for-all. 

 

Because not everyone is in this hobby for the money?

Some of us like to improve the default scenery where needed and not ask to be compensated for our time?

Payware will still exist, it just will have to raise the bar on what the community itself can contribute free of cost.

It works well for X-Plane and I see no reason why it can't work here.

Are you a payware developer?  Because you are coming across as one with this staunch defense of "people deserve to make money".  Go ahead, make money ... you'll just have to come to the table with something better than what non-professional scenery developers are willing to contribute at no charge.

[bonchie 2,305]

10 hours ago, JonP01 said:

Yes they did because they said:

"Perhaps the community members can push a change to the world and the devs or someone at the MSFS team can approve the changes"

They are all paid professionals in the team.

 

 

You act like that's some great burden. XP11's tiny development team manages to approve rounds of user updated airports between each major update. MSFS's team is perfectly capable of doing that and would likely see it as free labor being donated to them by the community. 

Content keeps people engaged. Developers like that, especially if they can get it for free instead of having to pay their staff to do the work. 

Edited April 14, 2020 by bonchie

[bonchie 2,305]

18 hours ago, Wobbie said:

Tuskin38 said:The creator of the thread is only talking about scenery, not airplanes. And there would always be the option to replace the new default additions with something else you prefer.

So why have community added scenery into the core, as suggested, when any & community developed scenery can be out there as payware or scenery to be chosen by us? I'm sure payware devs would want to be compensated for their time & effort. Doing scenery for free, does make it into a virtual free-for-all. 

Why stop at scenery? Aircraft was just an explanation example.

Just because X-Plane does it, does not make it an industry standard,

Anyhow, I'm not getting into MSFS/X-Plane comparisons.  

Because not everyone wants to pay $40 per airport and load their sim down with hundreds of different, individual addons?

Edited April 14, 2020 by bonchie

[snglecoil 1,828]

The reason X-Plane's scenery gateway is a great idea for that platform is because, well frankly, something is better than nothing. Crowd sourcing scenery development is a brilliant way for Laminar Research to bridge the huge gap that previously existed in their product. That huge gap doesn't appear to exist for MSFS. Will there be room to improve on what Asobo already does using a standard generic library? That's to be determined. Given what little I've seen, though, I'm feeling pretty good about the approach that Asobo is taking. 

[skully 1,045]

A method for users to apply high detail photogrammetry for any particular city that's not currently modeled to the sim would be excellent.

I'm not interested in high poly 3d scenery models bogging down framerates.

With the new sim I'm going default scenery as much as possible to preserve performance.

Also the ability to choose whether or not you want to add these user made sceneries to your sim.

[Dominique_K 10,133]

I see interesting thoughts here but leaning on the theoretical side. Allow me to get back with my own experience to the OP's question because he got it right IMO. 

On 4/12/2020 at 12:59 PM, noob123 said:

I hope sometime in the future when the game is released there will be the possibility of getting community involvement in improving the world such as areas of the world where autogen lacks and 3d models can be manually created and inserted, fixing terrain issues, waters, rivers and streams, or anywhere else that needs manual intervention.  

I hope too !

 1/ Money or no money

I really don't care. As many, I make sceneries, from time to time, because

1/ it is a creative pastime, the fun I have is a good payback

2/ nobody would make them for me anyway and the number of fellow simmers interested is limited. Examples : 

I "rehabed"  the default Harlan Cty KY (a land carrier of an airport, an interesting landing in any direction) and Wakulla Cty FL because the inaccuracy of the airport coordinates in the FS database induced conflicts with Vector (roads, water bodies) and the Pilot's  mesh.

I also  designed from scratch Long Island in Papua New Guinea. Terrain, huts, vegetation.

And many more.

 As the three above were not too shabby I shared them for free. Why not ? I do not make a philosophy of freeware.  I am not a good Samaritan and all pain deserves a salary as we say but it it wouldn't make sense to sell them for a couple of bucks 😄 !   

But all the small doodles of hundreds of simmers have accumulated in a mountain called the Avsim Library. Our hobby wouldn't be the same without it. Hear me Asobo ?

 

9 minutes ago, snglecoil said:

 That huge gap doesn't appear to exist for MSFS. Will there be room to improve on what Asobo already does using a standard generic library? That's to be determined.  

We just don't know, my friend. 

If we use a better mesh than FS20 default, will we have a plateau like I had for I35 to correct ?

Have all these small airports in the Appalachian wilderness that I suppose you know better than me, buildings ? And not only on tarmac. For instance, I made M93 Houston Cty TN . Nearby you  have a pontoon for sailboats and in the TVA lake buildings peeking through the water which drowned them 😀 ! 

Will Asobo have in their library the huts and cute small steamboats we see around the Amazon basin strips ?

And so on and so forth.

 

[Wobbie 938]

You must be talking about Aerofly's FS20... their mesh is actually not too bad. Quite flyable indeed.

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Basically, there is crowd sourcing already for FSX. It's called the AVSIM Library. I'm sure Dos Equis will have a spot there as well. Word of mouth vets it pretty well as far as value to the end user.

You could start your own 'official' addon repository if you want greater control.

Flight Sim World had a scheme for 3rd parties to be vetted by stating any 3rd party content could be used (stolen) as official Dovetail property... didn't work out so well for them, as they lost all 3rd party support almost instantly. Flight also doomed itself they same way.

Asobo is doing a decent job of creating basic scenery as part of the sim. But I don't believe they (or Microsoft) will want to revisit every airport to approve 3rd party addons. I think it will be better than what the basic X-Plane offers. They already have an Alpha ongoing to address things like content inaccuracy, and I believe they will have an "in game" app that will allow redesign of things like runways and taxiways and the like. With aerial imagery as a base of the sim, I would think they'll strive to get the airfields done right from the initial release. Discrepancies in core elements will be patched over time, and 3rd parties are going to be able to request airfield corrections to the core. They state they have a long-term commitment.

I do understand some end-users are collectors. They collect world-wide imagery and mesh and landclass. Other collectors gather airfields. Some collectors gather aircraft. These simmers drive the commercial 3rd party industry. The collectors rarely will visit 1% of the world the sim covers, nor fly 1% of the available 3rd party aircraft with any regularity. Demanding, or even desiring, 100% detailed accuracy of everything as a core element of the sim is not realistic. There would then be no need for 3rd party developers, and there would be no fun for the collectors. The sim would be complete. And a great many developers and collectors would move on to another sim or game to continue doing what they like to do. The only ones left would be the simmers that just enjoy the process of flying.

The formula for a successful flight simulator is FSX and by proxy P3D. It has made a lot of money for Microsoft, Dovetail, Lockheed-Martin, many 3rd party developers, and provided a strong group of end-users, and countless freeware 3rd party addons as well. FSX is a sandbox. It is versatile. Improvement of the sim drives interest. To change the formula to have approved and official 3rd party content added as a core component is not part of that successful formula. It would hamper content development and experimentation, and essentially kill the sim.

Edited April 14, 2020 by rhumbaflappy

[Dominique_K 10,133]

26 minutes ago, rhumbaflappy said:

  To change the formula to have approved and official 3rd party content added as a core component is not part of that successful formula. It would hamper content development and experimentation, and essentially kill the sim.

It would hamper content development all right. Not sure that it would kill the sim though. That depends on how good the sim scenery is. I am not an alpha tester so I do not really know except for what I see in  the teasers and screenshot.  MS Flight died of several design and commercial flaws and not only because it was rejected by the 3PD sector due to outrageous financial terms dictated by MS. 

Edited April 14, 2020 by domkle

[HiFlyer 9,343]

4 hours ago, domkle said:

MS Flight died of several design and commercial flaws and not only because it was rejected by the 3PD sector due to outrageous financial terms dictated by MS. 

Or at least that was the story put out by the 3PD's. I have always suspected that it was also at least in part a power struggle, as 3PD's felt they were absolutely necessary to any new sims success, to the point that they could dictate terms to a certain extent, on pain of withholding their offerings.

MSFS2020 conspicuously seems designed to stand pretty much on its own, with minimal, if any outside input necessary, and that puts Ms in a place where they are not at all supplicants, this time.

Again, considering past history, they would be foolish to do anything else.

Of course they want 3rd party participation and welcome it, but no more having to depend on it, or have a hollow sim.

Edited April 14, 2020 by HiFlyer