How will MSFS 2020 Affect Addon Developers?

[Superdelphinus 718]

Very surprising that people think this will ‘benefit’ add-on developers. For a few it may prove profitable if the game becomes less niche, but I would have though it’s shaping up to wreak havoc throughout the ad-on world. The only area I can see that will still thrive is additional planes, and maybe some gamification type add-ons.  

[Deleted 250]

I only know msfs from published pictures and videos. I'm not in alpha. But what I can imagine:

Traffic lights, Light billboards (currently only white and orange visible, cities are colorful), ATC, Liveries, industrial areas with smoke formation, Hail, autumn colored trees, (vatsim), ...

I now look at the fast many opportunities for developers without thinking about it. 

 

I also wonder if building airports with azure is easier than ever before? At airports, thousands of aircraft, which could be equipped with cameras and can feed data to Azure, fly worldwide. 

[SKEWR 364]

IMO

Developers who seem likely to profit from the new sim are the folks who make:

Aircraft, Airports, a better ATC (good luck with that), possibly shader modification programs, more cloud textures and utility programs (FSCaptain, Air Hauler, Nav Maps types, etc...)

 

Developers who seem likely to not do well in the upcoming sim are the folks who make:

Regional scenery, possibly photo real scenery, weather addons, landclass, possibly FSUIPC and possibly AI traffic

 

Of course, the final product is not released but if you make income from developing for flight sims you MUST think/plan for the move over to FS2020. Also, the mod community may find a bunch of bugs in the code and we may need a new utility mod (FSUIPC for example). While it may seem to some as a ton of of overthinking, it's not overthinking if it concerns $$$

 

PS: (Also a tree shrink mod and a mod to make runways that look like roller coasters! LOL)

Edited June 14, 2020 by SKEWR

[Amon1973 1,424]

17 hours ago, Superdelphinus said:

Very surprising that people think this will ‘benefit’ add-on developers. For a few it may prove profitable if the game becomes less niche, but I would have though it’s shaping up to wreak havoc throughout the ad-on world. The only area I can see that will still thrive is additional planes, and maybe some gamification type add-ons.  

The Scenery should be more or less complete on MSFS (except in the odd area around the World), however as we have seen on some of the official and leaked footage there are still plenty of opportunities for 3rd party devs for things like Airports, more in depth Aircraft and plenty of localised POI's to help with VFR/immersion, Asobo/MS can't get everything 100% accurate, they'll need 3rd party devs to achieve that, or even get anywhere near it.

[Tuskin38 6,632]

  

On 6/13/2020 at 7:46 PM, Superdelphinus said:

Very surprising that people think this will ‘benefit’ add-on developers. For a few it may prove profitable if the game becomes less niche, but I would have though it’s shaping up to wreak havoc throughout the ad-on world. The only area I can see that will still thrive is additional planes, and maybe some gamification type add-ons.  

Custom scenery will still have a place in the sim. There will still be thousands of airports that just use generic scenery.

There are cities without photogammetry that could but updated with addon scenery.

Edited June 18, 2020 by Tuskin38