Still Cheaper than PMDG planes

[G MIDY 101]

52 minutes ago, Huascar said:

Quality and payware don’t belong together in the same sentence. Forums are full of topics from people who are trying to repair their broken sims. While PMDG products are above average, they are overpriced. How much labor went into MSFS 2020? They’re charging a fraction of what PMDG charges. 

An average simulation replicates the intended design but a true simulation replicates the consequences of that design which is the PMDG/FSL level. For example, what are the consequences of a failed hydraulic system on an A320? What happens on a 737 if we lose a generator?

As you start to increase the complexity you start to increase the cost/effort required because you have to replicate the systems of the aircraft in code. To be honest the simulator becomes irrelevant in these aircraft and really it's more about the aircraft simulation rather than the simulator. The PSX 747 for example barely has visuals yet it is an excellent replication of the 747 systems hence why it costs $300+.

Making things look pretty is extremely easy and non-time consuming in the FS world which is why you see so many new aircraft announcements start with the visuals but then later fail and disappear at the systems stage.

So far the technical details of the aircraft in MFS2020 are absent so clearly it isn't where the money and effort has been spent. I'm therefore not expecting anything magical, they will probably be functional but I wouldn't expect much more.

Edited July 14, 2020 by G MIDY

[captain420 3,099]

I heard the A320 and 747 FMS is working and supports AIRAC, SID/STAR, so that's a huge plus and much better than any other default plane I've seen in any sim for that matter.

[Thomasso 224]

7 hours ago, lzamm said:

Ah, but they won't be, will they?   They'll be better than the FSX default but don't expect too much from them.

To quote Aerosoft's Mathijs Kok from a post linked to on another thread, "we will make the Airbusses, our friends at PMDG will make the Boeings..."   They're expecting to make oodles of cash out of this, and I don't think they're wrong.

True but we mostly need FsLabs, not Aerosoft 😛

[hangar 661]

7 hours ago, DavidP said:

The default aircraft look good, to be sure, and I hope they are better than defaults we have been used to (especially that TBM 😋). However I think it highly unlikely they are as good as the big aircraft developers.

As always, your mileage may very.

This is nearly guaranteed...

While I'm happy that MS has decided to try and get back into the genre and I'm hopeful this will at some point become a good product, that can compete with what I hope will be a better physics engine and camera system, I just can't help limiting my expectations to a more believable scenario that has the quality of default MS aircraft nowhere near as polished as the best 3rd party devs.

In fact, it would not surprise me one bit to see alot of disappointed faces on the folks who end up pre-buying into the most expensive Premium version hoping that they would actually get 10 extra aircraft developed to 3rd party standards. It would be too easy, too cheap, and too good to be true... and THAT is not reality of the times we live in.

That being said, while I personally have interest in 2 of the planes that only come within the premium version I'm sure if one would enjoy those planes they would be well worth an extra 5 or 10 dollars per plane...but the question is...will you (and me) be happy paying extra money for stock planes that really don't fly or perform much better than the typical "out of the box" experience we're used to from previous decades?

[Dominique_K 10,138]

1 hour ago, ckyliu said:

@micstatic@Dominique_K I don't think most users wish the death of payware addon developers, but many (including myself) are annoyed at some of their pricing practices and their weak justification - particularly the trope that because P3D was a professional non-entertainment product they'd need to double their prices, and that you couldn't upgrade from the existing product you already owned on a similar platform.

PMDG started all that and most customers grumbled but paid so many other developers jumped on the bandwagon; the end result being aircraft prices almost tripling (from $55 for the FSX 747-X to $140 for the P3Dv4 QotSII, of which <$10 is inflation) - I get the newer products often have more features but not three times more!

On a related note but not a slight on the developers, I think many users are fed up (again myself included) of having to pay for addons just to get basic functionality that should've been included within the P3D base sim; I am thankful to weather engines, REX4 and ORBX Global for giving my FSX+P3D a life extension but those products shouldn't have needed to exist.

I understand all that my friend but I also know from where this hobby comes from.  And I have a slight idea of the financial risk and labor involved in designing these little marvels of software engineering we have now.  

A sale is meeting point of a seller and a buyer around a price. You don't like the price, you don't buy.  If PMDG did anything wrong it is to try to justify their price. They shouldn't.  

You can be sorry not to be able to afford something and make it known but I find outrageous  to wish the economic death of these people who were essential to the growth of this hobby.  And, may I add that to say that they sell products that are "destructive" as the OP did is  a lie.  

 

[bonchie 2,305]

I treat MSFS's cost the same way I treat XP11.

If someone is willing to spend $135 on a single plane, does it really make sense to proclaim you won't spent that on an entire base game? Yeah, XP11 is rough around the edges, but it was worth the money. MSFS is going to be worth the money. It will not be perfect, but so what? The value is there. Trust me.

[ckyliu 1,749]

16 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

You don't like the price, you don't buy.  If PMDG did anything wrong it is to try to justify their price.

I haven't bought anything by PMDG since the J41 because of the pricing (and even then I got it in an Aerosoft sale 🤣 ). I refuse to buy FS2Crew and A2A for P3D because they insist on repurchase from FSX versions. I can afford these things, but I won't buy on principle; if only everyone else who didn't agree with the price had done that, we wouldn't be in a world of $100 addons.

Edited July 14, 2020 by ckyliu

[Chock 17,769]

The 'it's cheaper than a fancy add-on plane' argument is somewhat misleading, in both plus and minus ways.

I think I paid 139 quid for the FSL A320 for FSX, and then I paid a similar amount again to get it for P3D, but either way, I also had to buy the sims they ran in. Now if you think about that, this means I got FSX and the FSL A320 for about 150 quid (I've bought FSX a few times over the years, but let's go with the version I got on Steam for about 20 quid, sometimes it is sold for as little as about a fiver). This is about 30-40 quid more than I've just paid for the new super-duper version of the new MS sim, but I've still only got the default planes for that money.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure the new sim will have many better functions, and the default planes will be pretty good, but I'm willing to bet that the new A320 in the new sim won't be a patch on the FSL A320 for FSX or P3D, so we're still likely to be buying an add-on A320 for the new sim at some point. Then there's EFB add-ons, co-pilot add-ons, etc, etc, all of which I'm sure will be on the way.

Yeah I'm looking forward to the new sim, but if anyone imagines it'll mean an end to add-ons for which we will be inclined to pay more, they're more of an optimist than I'll ever be!

[Dominique_K 10,138]

Just now, ckyliu said:

 I we wouldn't be in a world of $100 addons.

But we are not ! Most of the addon aircraft are well below 100 €. Only a few are above the bar and I would speculate that if they were not at that price level we wouldn’t have any.

PS nice aircraft that J41, thanks for bring it back to ly memory.

 

[ckyliu 1,749]

27 minutes ago, Chock said:

Then there's EFB add-ons, co-pilot add-ons, etc, etc, all of which I'm sure will be on the way.

Yeah I'm looking forward to the new sim, but if anyone imagines it'll mean an end to add-ons for which we will be inclined to pay more, they're more of an optimist than I'll ever be!

Well they are bundling in an EFB by the looks of it. And we've got ground handling services. And awesome weather. And nav data updates. So that's 4 addons down 😄

But you are absolutely right, there will always be addons but perhaps they won't be so essential this time around which might apply some downward price pressure or at least apply the brakes a bit. There's also potentially a large increase in sales volumes using the integral market place. I suspect airframers such as PMDG, FSL and their ilk will continue at P3D prices though.

Edited July 14, 2020 by ckyliu

[Huascar 179]

It’s not a matter of affordability or being cheap - to me, this is an issue of principle. You purchase an aircraft for $135 and PMDG refuses to offer a discount to migrate to another sim platform. You are forced to pay full price for the same place. It’s not as if they had to rebuild the entire plane from scratch. To me, this implies that the company has no empathy for its customers. To his day, as far an I am concern, they have never offered a discount to it’s customers. If the default MSFS  747 is decent, now need to pay a $135 dollars.

[Thomasso 224]

35 minutes ago, Huascar said:

It’s not a matter of affordability or being cheap - to me, this is an issue of principle. You purchase an aircraft for $135 and PMDG refuses to offer a discount to migrate to another sim platform. You are forced to pay full price for the same place. It’s not as if they had to rebuild the entire plane from scratch. To me, this implies that the company has no empathy for its customers. To his day, as far an I am concern, they have never offered a discount to it’s customers. If the default MSFS  747 is decent, now need to pay a $135 dollars.

For me, there's quite a difference between "decent" and "awesome".

[Huascar 179]

What’s more impressive- MSFS 2020 or a PMDG plane? The realism in MSFS is unmatched. I only compare the two in the sense that MSFS is revolutionary. The best minds in the industry worked for several years on this project tirelessly to give us true realism. This could have easily cost $700. Of course PMDG will move quickly to offer the same plane in this new platform and it will charge the same or  more, again. How many times have some of you purchased the same planes. You want to waste your money away, be my guess. The good news is the we don’t have to have PMDG to have an amazing immersive experience. 

Edited July 14, 2020 by Huascar

[micstatic 4,319]

1 minute ago, Huascar said:

What’s more impressive- MSFS 2020 or a PMDG plane? 

Based on what I've seen.  A PMDG plane

[threexgreen 3,139]

3 hours ago, Huascar said:

Quality and payware don’t belong together in the same sentence. Forums are full of topics from people who are trying to repair their broken sims. While PMDG products are above average, they are overpriced. How much labor went into MSFS 2020? They’re charging a fraction of what PMDG charges. 

11 minutes ago, Huascar said:

What’s more impressive- MSFS 2020 or a PMDG plane?

[...]

You want to waste your money away, be my guess. The good news is the we don’t have to have PMDG to have an amazing immersive experience. 

Why are we comparing addon aircraft to a whole flight simulator and why are we comparing PMDG to Microsoft/Asobo? It doesn't make any sense. PMDG are a 10 man (or so) firm working full-time while Microsoft is a billion-dollar firm and Asobo are working on this sim with a team of 150 to 200 people. You can't compare the prices of the two. Microsoft could charge a few bucks and still be fine while PMDG are living off the sales in a niche hobby.

I agree, the prices are very high but the reason for that is that people are willing to buy at these prices. It's basic economics, you charge what the market can bear/what the customers are willing to pay and that's not different when it comes to flight simming. I have not bought the 777 for P3D because I couldn't justify paying the full 130 bucks again after purchasing the FSX version but PMDG aren't doing any wrong by charging what they can and they don't have to offer sales (which they did several times recently actually) just because it seems to have become standard practice in this hobby. It's nice to have these sales and all but no one is entitled to them. The point of sales, by the way, is of course to make money by selling more units and most of these sales aren't exactly done out of empathy but plainly for the profit.