Microsoft's answer to ActiveSky

[Kopteeni 819]

19 minutes ago, johannes1337 said:

This is just silly. No one is going to buy an add-on for $100 for a simulator that will likely cost $60 and already has an incredible accuracy and visuals. You are just scared that no one will buy your add-ons anymore. Just accept that someone is finally making a next-gen flight sim that both looks amazing and is very realistic. The days of spending hundreds of dollars on miniscule details are over. I checked your company's website, no one will pay $15 for a single airport anymore when there is an SDK that allows users to modify airports as they wish. If Microsoft provides some kind of community review process for custom/edited airports, and then include them in the sim, the days of airport add-ons are over (except maybe really highly detailed airports). People love to work for free if it makes it in the sim, Alpha Testers are already spending many hours testing and reporting bugs for free. 

Well I hope for your sake there will be enough people willing to put in the hours for free to make your hobby better for you.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,903]

3 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

A promo trailer on Navblue (an Airbus company btw) is scheduled for next Thursday that may shed some light on the issue. 

The issue is not to know whether MS will get the data free but if we, the users, will get them free, isn’t it ? MS has many way to compensate for the cost besides asking for a subscription which cannot be totally excluded though.

Basically there is a two-tier market. I would be very happy to have access to all the 2020 data at release including the charts but I do not care much to have several updates a year.  Some fellow simmers are keener to have the last update. Two markets, two pricings ? 

 

I did suggest there could be a pro version with these services included. There will be a lot of casual users who aren’t bothered about AIRAC data especially. Another possibility is it’s released with these extras free for six months after which they become chargeable.

Speculation? Of course. Time will tell.

[johannes1337 22]

33 minutes ago, tonywob said:

Are you serious? Do you really think users are going to make their own airports instead of buy them? People want to fly in the sim, not develop their own airports. 

 

 

Ever heard of X-Plane's scenery gateway... this didn't end payware airports in X-Plane

What I'm talking about is not a third-party service to download airports, but instead a way to directly submit it to MFS to be included in the sim without the need to download it manually. I don't think it's unlikely that people will correct and prettify their own local airports that they use all the time. Of course people won't make super detailed airports with custom 3D models for free, but if the SDK is good I'm sure it will be possible to create a convincing airport with relative ease. 

Edited June 14, 2020 by johannes1337

[johannes1337 22]

10 minutes ago, Kopteeni said:

Well I hope for your sake there will be enough people willing to put in the hours for free to make your hobby better for you.

They already are. Thousand of testers are currently spending many hours of their free time to improve the sim by testing and reporting bugs 🙂 and have you ever heard of open source? So many other games have a huge modding community that don't require you to pay a single cent for many amazing mods. Just because the flight sim community has been overpaying for add ons for years doesn't mean it can't change. 

[Kopteeni 819]

1 minute ago, johannes1337 said:

They already are. Thousand of testers are currently spending many hours of their free time to improve the sim by testing and reporting bugs 🙂 and have you ever heard of open source? So many other games have a huge modding community that don't require you to pay a single cent for many amazing mods. Just because the flight sim community has been overpaying for add ons for years doesn't mean it can't change. 

That's great, so things are really working out for you.

[johannes1337 22]

5 minutes ago, Kopteeni said:

That's great, so things are really working out for you.

I'm not taking it for granted. I'm a tester myself and have spent many hours reporting bugs. I'm just not willing to pay hundreds of dollars on add-ons. 

[tonywob 4,768]

12 minutes ago, johannes1337 said:

So many other games have a huge modding community that don't require you to pay a single cent for many amazing mods. Just because the flight sim community has been overpaying for add ons for years doesn't mean it can't change. 

I'm sorry, but it sounds like you're living in a dream world here. There is actually a pretty large freeware community for X-Plane already (although it's died down on P3D/FSX now), and there is so much stuff out there for free for X-Plane if you look, and yet people still make payware and sell it, and make money. 

Yes, there are plenty of games that have mods, e.g. The Steam Workshop, but none of these as far as I know have killed payware products unless the sim itself doesn't allow it.

You're also forgetting that MS aren't a charity, they need this product to make money one way or the other. So having a store with payware products where they get a commission is in the interest of Microsoft as well as the the users.

[Kopteeni 819]

Are there any examples where a large company has tapped into their community's work for free to improve their product and not getting eaten alive by the press?

[Carts85 1,203]

This is probably the most interesting thread I’ve seen on Avsim since the alpha took hold like something out of the invasion of the body snatchers. So well done guys 👍 
 
My 2cents. The only time I’ve been concerned about the clouds visually was in the IFR video they just didn’t look right at all however, the vast majority of what I’ve seen far outweighs the bad and it’s probably already been said but we really can’t make any comparison of any real merit while it’s unfinished so some of the negative comments from a few people do feel like they have an agenda to me.

 

[Will Fly For Cheese 1,710]

Whilst in lockdown my graphics card blew up - rather spectacularly I might add - left me half-deaf for a couple of hours but I had a couple of weeks running my very dated GTX750. 

I had a look around at other games and was very impressed with Assetto Corsa - (Car Racing).

Then I had a look at add-ons for it and felt absolutely cheated. Add-on cars - which are digital works of art - same as some of our aeroplanes, were available for about $3.95 a piece. Add-on racing tracks - faithful reproductions of their real world counterparts - seem to come as a pack of six or so - priced around the $10 mark. I quickly surmised that the low prices were due to the competition and the fact that they were sold in great volume to Assetto users. Although the cars tech might not be as complicated as your average A320 the race tracks are probably more complicated than your standard add-on airport. Some of these companies go out and laser measure every inch of the track they're modelling for an authentic car behaviour experience, etc.

I believe we have been in a position where add-on devs have over-charged us because of what is being offered, lack of competition and radical improvement over the stock sim.

This is what I really hope is going to radically change with the new FSX. I can't see x-box users swallowing eye-wateringly high add-on prices. I should think they'll visit the Market Place part of the sim and surmise the prices put up there - if they're the same as we're used to, is some sort of typo error.

 

p.s; BTW - real world clouds can look rather silly - check these post-storm mammatus clouds...

Edited June 14, 2020 by Will Fly For Cheese

[Deleted 250]

11 minutes ago, Will Fly For Cheese said:

This is what I really hope is going to radically change with the new FSX.

New FSX? The Steam Version? I already have it. But no radical change to the original FSX. 

Just joking 😂

[johannes1337 22]

11 minutes ago, tonywob said:

I'm sorry, but it sounds like you're living in a dream world here. There is actually a pretty large freeware community for X-Plane already (although it's died down on P3D/FSX now), and there is so much stuff out there for free for X-Plane if you look, and yet people still make payware and sell it, and make money. 

Yes, there are plenty of games that have mods, e.g. The Steam Workshop, but none of these as far as I know have killed payware products unless the sim itself doesn't allow it.

You're also forgetting that MS aren't a charity, they need this product to make money one way or the other. So having a store with payware products where they get a commission is in the interest of Microsoft as well as the the users.

I'm not denying that there is a large amount of freeware available. And I'm sure there will be plenty of great payware for MFS. All I'm saying is that it's silly to expect people to spend $100 on "affordable" weather plugins when it's so obvious we are getting a truly next-gen sim here. Yes, there will be plenty of room to improve with mods, but spreading fear about things like the "cotton ball look" of clouds and then saying that people should just spend the $100 on a plugin is insane. Let's wait until it is released and then see if there is a need for that. So many here are scared that their sims where they spent so much money on are made obsolete with a product that already includes most of what their beloved payware does.

I'm aware that MS need to make money, and they will. We already know there will be a marketplace and that's awesome. I'm just not seeing people pay hundreds of dollars for the equivalents of current add-ons for things like weather. But of course there will be plenty of payware planes and other things like airports.

And when I'm thinking about mods in other games I'm thinking about things like Skyrim, GTA5 roleplaying, Minecraft. These games are so popular that people naturally create free mods and share it with the community. Without free mods, games like Minecraft would have never gotten as popular as they are.

[GCBraun 2,390]

I also hope that there is some sort of marketplace built into MSFS for add-ons/freeware. Cannot take this “download from dozens of different sources” approach anymore.

[tonywob 4,768]

2 minutes ago, johannes1337 said:

All I'm saying is that it's silly to expect people to spend $100 on "affordable" weather plugins when it's so obvious we are getting a truly next-gen sim here. Yes, there will be plenty of room to improve with mods, but spreading fear about things like the "cotton ball look" of clouds and then saying that people should just spend the $100 on a plugin is insane

I agree on this with you, and this is not what I'm debating with you about 🙂. I'm debating you saying there won't be a need for payware airports because people can make their own easily. Users have always been able to make their own airports in both X-Plane and P3D/FSX, doesn't mean they will do it though.

Personally, I won't spend $100 on a weather addon in any sim, and judging by the shots I don't see it would be needed in MFS. But I'm also 100% certain we'll need airports, as generic default/lego-brick airports will only get you so far.

I have no doubt we'll see lots of freeware and enthusiasm, and I hope we do. It will keep the sim alive and interesting. But believing this alone will be enough for many simmers is probably being a bit naive.

[johannes1337 22]

26 minutes ago, Kopteeni said:

Are there any examples where a large company has tapped into their community's work for free to improve their product and not getting eaten alive by the press?

When I was talking about improving the product itself instead of add-ons I was only talking about airports. When created with their own SDK, it can be considered feedback just like Alpha testers are giving feedback on things like airports already. Of course highly detailed user created content can't just be taken by MS and put into the sim.

More generally, we wouldn't be discussing this right now if it wasn't for open-source projects like the Linux kernel and other important projects. Not everything has to be made commercial. And when there is a large, dedicated community behind a project many great things will come out of it, for free.