Looking to love my sim...just enough (an open letter LM)

[simbol 5,893]

34 minutes ago, robnhood said:

Hi Rob,

I don't think either P3D or XP disappear anytime soon, but rather they will get less money flowing their direction, which will hurt future development. Hey, I could be wrong and they both could come back stronger than ever. But personally I doubt that is going to happen. Anyone new to flight sims will be more than likely to try MSFS 2020. The hardcore flight simmers will be lured into MSFS by the vast development going towards them. And being able to fly the entire planet in photo scenery? I hope P3D and XP answer and up their game, but technically I think they have a big hill ahead of them to climb. It is far easier for MS to fix what is missing than P3D and XP. Just my opinion!

 

The way I see it, all platforms have a big hill to climb.. MSFS will need to move to DX12 to push the performance barrier people are looking for.. that alongside other current technical limitations I cannot disclose due to NDAs in order to allow more stuff to be pushed by developers to this Sim.

In the other hand XP is almost there with Vulkan and P3D is already on DX12 but they need more eye candy stuff to level up with MSFS..

So in a way, we have all platforms sitting on each side of the extremes.. hopefully they will all move towards a more centred position, P3D / XP with more eye candy rendering and MSFS moving towards DX12 and increasing the platform and SDK capabilities.

S.

[jabloomf1230 2,456]

Simbol, 

Although I agree with your comments, they describe Mount Everest and not a hill. MSFS needs so many other major fixes to its key features (in addition to DX12) that it is going to be a while before it is a complete flightsim. I think that the major impediment to improvement is that the vast majority of the MSFS user base is happy with the present state of the sim. The situation will only get worse when Asobo gets distracted by the XBox version. 

XP is really the lost soul in the flightsim competition. It is neither the VFR gem that MSFS is nor is it the study level platform that is P3d5.  I've deleted it from my PC as I couldn't figure out a use for it, now that I have MSFS. XP11 was finally gaining some traction with 3rd party developers, but now they've all run off trying to retool for MSFS.

P3d5 really needs streaming orthoimagery like MSFS has, as the alternatives (Ortho for P3d and having your bank account drained by ORBX) are sadly inferior, given the amount of user effort needed either through tinkering or spending money. If LM can ever get trueSky to work correctly, there's at least a chance that P3d5 could remain a viable niche product and a long term competitor to MSFS. The lack of streaming  orthoimagery is P3d5's Achilles heel.

I don't think we're quite in the "Golden Age" of flightsims just yet.

Jay

[simbol 5,893]

5 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

Although I agree with your comments,

Well yea.. we are more or less on the same thoughts.. all platforms still have a long way to go..

One factor we are still unable to measure at this point in time is how long new Gamers will really stay using MSFS, this is impossible to know for the moment because it is too soon and also the Xbox version is not available yet.. another interesting factor we need to see is how long / how many Simmers will remain using MSFS only.

Normally P3D hard core simmers stay around one way or another.. so although at the moment a vast majority of 3rd party developers are now desperate to bring something to MSFS in order to explore that market, it is fair too soon to know the purchasing behaviour for this new platform.. so in the meantime they will continue supporting P3D of course. The expectations are that MSFS market will be bigger, and it might be.. but I don't think I have seen enough data to confirm it.. I read some news saying "1 million users have used MSFS" which I found interesting, it would have been better to know "how much are using it now" rather than "have use it", those words have a total different meaning and analytics.

But the figure makes sense, if you add XP + P3D + FSX + FS9 + new users and combine the figures you would be reaching that quantity for sure, so, it seems what we know so far is that at least everyone into flight simulators has tried MSFS.. but we don't know for sure how many "new users" we have.. very difficult figure to measure.

Conclusion, it is really early stages to know what the future holds, but.. we can certainly say all 3 platforms are and will continue to mature.. people can always change their decisions on each platform new release.. they always say, no way I am going back to X, Y, Z.. but then they miss something from either Z or Y or X..

The platform that manages to understand it's own flaws and improve these overtime will remain the biggest market / leader market, however I don't see the others entirely disappearing... 

S.

[Christopher Low 5,565]

Quote

.....it seems what we know so far is that at least everyone into flight simulators has tried MSFS....

I guess that makes me unique

[Nyxx 6,996]

1 hour ago, Christopher Low said:

I guess that makes me unique

and for someone that like flying around the UK & Ireland in PR, it really is your lost.

And that's on a old PC that can run that at 50FPS (40 London)

[Christopher Low 5,565]

I do not consider it a loss, David. I do not have the motivation for flight simulation at the moment, and I have got into the habit of not spending a lot of money on stuff that I do not need.

 

[Patco Lch 1,530]

46 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

and I have got into the habit of not spending a lot of money on stuff that I do not need.

 

👍

[GSalden 4,737]

Long before MSFS : 3 years ago before TE UK . PR scenery + custom AG + Live Traffic  ( watch out for the plane turning op the rw 😅 ) 

And with the better looking TE UK I can do the same at 220 knots and flying low with bad weather ...

[Nyxx 6,996]

10 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

I do not consider it a loss, David. I do not have the motivation for flight simulation at the moment, and I have got into the habit of not spending a lot of money on stuff that I do not need.

 

Ok I understand, if your motivation returns, imo MSFS is perfect for you, think of it this way, you get all of the UK and Ireland with full PR and from looking around were I live, perfect AG, shadows on everything, traffic on all roads, weather to dream for, landing on grass strips is fantastic as we now have “real” grass, not the cardboard lines, the default 152 moded, 172 and the moded Bonanza are just fine, and you can get all that from the base sim with no addons needed. So that’s very cheap. I normally take a good break from fight simulator in the summer every year but this year is a “bit “ different from a normal year to say the least. 
Take care and I hope your mojo returns after a break.

[SAS443 1,841]

9 hours ago, GSalden said:

Long before MSFS...

Yes that is quite evident based on the graphics in the video. 

[d.tsakiris 425]

1 hour ago, Nyxx said:

the default 152 moded, 172 and the moded Bonanza are just fine, and you can get all that from the base sim with no addons needed

I find that a bit contradictory. A mod is an add-on, in the sense that some parts of the offering aren't up to the expectations and need to be improved.

[GSalden 4,737]

23 minutes ago, SAS443 said:

Yes that is quite evident based on the graphics in the video. 

Development is going fast these days and that is a good thing..

2020 V5:

[Nyxx 6,996]

19 minutes ago, d.tsakiris said:

I find that a bit contradictory. A mod is an add-on, in the sense that some parts of the offering aren't up to the expectations and need to be improved.

He was talking about spending money, the Mod is free. If you want to nick pick them just use the 172 G1000 or steam version out the box. Also the 152 is fine without the mod. People just love nick picking.

[d.tsakiris 425]

40 minutes ago, Nyxx said:

Also the 152 is fine without the mod

Why the mod then? Also, I've read otherwise. So, not nitpicking.

Listen, for certain aspects, MSFS seems to be awesome. For some others, not so much. It depends on what type of simmer you are to define if MSFS is the sim for you, or not. Personally, I hope it will become the sim of our dreams - but I've hoped that before. Time will tell.

[Nyxx 6,996]

"Listen", he flies UK and Ireland  to upgrade to MSFS for him apart from buying the base flight sim is free and everything I talked about is free, what part off free do you not understand? his point was about not wanting to get into a buying habit was it NOT? or is that concept to hard to understand. So yer your nitpicking for the sake of what? a free mod that you can choose to use or not, pathetic.