9 minutes ago, ErichB said:

Unless the company is Google and using their map data, it's all a bit of a busted flush.  

Orthphotos are Not the only way to go.

 

And worldwide data ain't exclusive for microsoft and bing, or google.

Edited August 13, 20205 yr by mtaxp

11 minutes ago, mtaxp said:

Anyway back to original topic, next x-plane is CONFIRMED to have a new weather engine (and weather rednering) and new scenery

Current MSFS is CONFIRMED to have a new weather engine (and weather rendering) and new scenery. 😄 

Available August 18.

Hook

19 minutes ago, ErichB said:

This kind of bickering is pointless and childish.    I am not a fan of XP for purely subjective reasons, but I have huge respect for Austin.  I may not prefer his sim, but I have learned a lot from his talks over the years.  He is hugely passionate about the science of flight and is therefore one of the most interesting, if not the most interesting characters in our industry.  

But XP is a passion project of him and only Austin will ever understand why he makes certain decisions.  He really isn't interested in what you think of XP , or what add-ons are available for XP or what controllers are available for XP, - and he is clearly dismissive of competition which stems from his own belief in his product.  Nothing wrong with that.  It's admirable.  I think if XP only appealed to purists who only see things things the way he sees things, he'd be happy with that.  He has enough commercial income off XP anyway.  He really is not interested in little Jonny with his bedroom PC and a copy of XP.

Austin is an odd guy who started a sim that's done well for itself. He was in the right place at the right time, and found a niche for his product. If he had launched in 2005 rather than 1995, it probably wouldn't have worked out for him,

X-plane has prospered recently, but that's because it's only had some mediocre competition from P3D. Both sims have developed at a glacial pace and failed to seize supremacy in the space left by MS when it canned the ACES studio.

Since its release, X-plane 11 has seen a mass migration of new fliers to the sim. On August 18th, there's going to be an equally significant migration of people away from X-plane and over to MSFS. The unfortunate reality is that default X-plane looks pretty bad ("plausible world", not really) and X-plane 11 with all the trimmings still looks pretty ugly and lacks basic features (water, clouds, proper AI traffic, property ATC).

X-plane had a window of opportunity to address these problems - and it failed. And a lot of that i down to Austin's idiosyncratic leadership.

Will X-plane die on August 18th? Of course not. I've been using the sim since v9, and fully plan to continue doing so into the future. But a decent chunk of the user base will be heading over to MSFS from that day forward. X-plane's attractiveness to payware developers and % of market share most likely hit its peak in the latter years of the XP11 era.

 

 

 

 

I also find it interesting that some XP developers have announced products for MFS

2 minutes ago, ErichB said:

I also find it interesting that some XP developers have announced products for MFS

The payware market for X-plane 11 has only recently grown to a decent size. In the XP10 era their really wasn't a wide selection around, certainly nothing to compared with that available for FSX.

I suspect that X-plane addon sales are already decreasing, and will plunge further over the next 12 months.

X-plane has a very loyal core following, but some of those people were always more inclined to freeware - I think the FS9/FSX refugees did a lot to make the X-plane payware market prosper over the past few years.

5 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

The unfortunate reality is that default X-plane looks pretty bad ("plausible world", not really) and X-plane 11 with all the trimmings still looks pretty ugly and lacks basic features (water, clouds, proper AI traffic, property ATC).

X-plane had a window of opportunity to address these problems - and it failed. And a lot of that i down to Austin's idiosyncratic leadership.

While I think that is a fair critique from what I've watched and read over the years, the criticism heaped onto both P3D and XP by some people for not delivering what Asobo has with MSFS is completely unwarranted.

LR hasn't the access to resources, financial or otherwise.
LM hasn't allowed the P3D team to leverage LM's proprietary resources for the consumer educational sim (for obvious military reasons).

With a trillion dollar market cap company with huge worldwide IT infrastructure, data and know-how backing the new Flight Sim, how could P3D or XP ever truly compete?
 

40 minutes ago, mtaxp said:

Anyway back to original topic, next x-plane is CONFIRMED to have a new weather engine (and weather rednering) and new scenery (working with an external company/easter european free lancers.).

 

27 minutes ago, LHookins said:

Current MSFS is CONFIRMED to have a new weather engine (and weather rendering) and new scenery. 😄 

Available August 18.

 

That's a huge argument. The market for those features will probably be satisfied by MS once XP pushes in.

Edited August 13, 20205 yr by tweekz

10 minutes ago, tweekz said:

 

 

That's a huge argument. The market for those features will probably be satisfied by MS once XP pushes in.

Not to me. Orthphotos while they might look good they also present weird artifacts, low quality imagery, ~5 years dated, stuck in certain lightning conditions/time/season and many other ugly and weird stuff baked on it=Kills how consistent stuff look=Kills the illusion, especially in VR.

Procedural is the way to go, IMO. It will be also much better in seasons represantions, for example.

Edited August 13, 20205 yr by mtaxp

1 minute ago, mtaxp said:

Not to me. Orthphotos while they might look good they also present weird artifacts, low quality imagery, ~5 years dated, stuck in certain lightning conditions and many other ugly and weird stuff baked on it.

Procedural is the way to go, IMO. It will be also much better in seasons represantions, for example.

Orthophotos is just the starting point. MSFS scenery is orthophotos + (not procedurally but authentic) placed objects by analyzing the satellite images.

I am still curious how they handle harsh image changes (summer to winter transition) in satellite images, but the tech is there to solve this as well.

8 minutes ago, mtaxp said:

Procedural is the way to go, IMO. It will be also much better in seasons represantions, for example.

If I wanted to fly over some fantasy terrain, I'd fly XPlane.  <sorry 'bout that>

Hook

1 hour ago, mtaxp said:

However you should count smart-phones as x-plane supports them, those probably have a huge revenue too.

As a beta tester for xCloud, which is publicly releasing mid next month, it is likely that this game will be a showcase for mobile streaming in the near future. And due to the Xbox integration, I am guessing purchased dlc could be incorporated. 

Just a guess of course 

14 minutes ago, tweekz said:

Orthophotos is just the starting point. MSFS scenery is orthophotos + (not procedurally but authentic) placed objects by analyzing the satellite images.

I am still curious how they handle harsh image changes (summer to winter transition) in satellite images, but the tech is there to solve this as well.

Cool, but this debunks the calim that MSFS current scenery will satisfy for the long term:-)

If next year another simulator will bring a procedural world based on real data, without orthos and their inherited artifacts, although your house's roof color might not be 100% the same, I would be really interested in it. Wouldn't you?

Edited August 13, 20205 yr by mtaxp

It will be very interesting to see the results of the Navigraph survey next year in terms of the shift in people’s primary sim platform.

1 minute ago, regis9 said:

It will be very interesting to see the results of the Navigraph survey next year in terms of the shift in people’s primary sim platform.

If charts+ is included with the new sim. I’m not so sure Navigraph’s costumers base would represent accurately people using MSFS.

 

P.S.: I know you don’t need to be a costumer to answer to their survey, but I’m not so sure how relevant Navigraph will still be for that platform. 

12 minutes ago, mtaxp said:

Cool, but this debunks the calim that MSFS current scenery will satisfy for the long term:-)

If next year another simulator will bring a procedural world based on real data, without orthos and their inherited artifacts, although your house's roof color might not be 100% the same, I would be really interested in it. Wouldn't you?

Procedural generation is kind of a more fancy name for autogen.

Sure they could base certain things on available data (and will), but if it was as accurate as MSFS the data size would be huge and would probably need streaming as well. So you can bet it's also based on an algorithm guessing what makes sense for a certain area, according to the provided data.

So in the end, you might be better off with a scenery based on a 5 year old satellite image.

Edited August 13, 20205 yr by tweekz