32 minutes ago, honanhal said:

I took part in their user “poll” three long years ago and told them I’d buy a Concorde addon. At the time I was (of course) using P3D and I would happily have bought it for P3D.

That was then. Things have changed! I will now absolutely not buy any Concorde addon for P3D. I’d buy an MSFS addon from FSL in a heartbeat.

Agree 100% with Alan that FSL should think very carefully before committing to a long-term development for a sim with an already relatively small — and now diminishing — user base.

James

There won't be one for MFS assuming this "unpaused" version is for P3D. FSL always said they would only develop one 64-bit Concorde. This will (probably) be the only opportunity you'll get.

P3D diminishing user base?? Care to point people to the source for that info? It is possible for people to have P3D and MFS on the same computer. Plenty will I imagine. One for VFR, the other for IFR.

Never mind the state of the MSFS SDK. The very fact that MSFS currently is "Mach limited" makes the issue entirely moot... 😡

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

If you look at the FSL forum you'll see it was David Norfolk who decided it was probably P3Dv5 given the PBR effects. It seems inconceivable it would be MFS given the state of the SDK.

Without being rude, am I meant to know who he is? 

My point is, this is all guesswork regardless of who is saying what!  All they've said is that development is un-paused...   At the end of the day, they will decide what sim and we will find out when they announce it. 

Let's just be glad we know it is progressing. 

15 minutes ago, trumpetfrazz1 said:

Without being rude, am I meant to know who he is? 

My point is, this is all guesswork regardless of who is saying what!  All they've said is that development is un-paused...   At the end of the day, they will decide what sim and we will find out when they announce it. 

Let's just be glad we know it is progressing. 

I’ve seen him post frequently and he seems to know what he’s talking about. Treat it as guesswork if you wish. For me it can only be for P3D.

2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

There won't be one for MFS assuming this "unpaused" version is for P3D. FSL always said they would only develop one 64-bit Concorde. This will (probably) be the only opportunity you'll get.

P3D diminishing user base?? Care to point people to the source for that info? It is possible for people to have P3D and MFS on the same computer. Plenty will I imagine. One for VFR, the other for IFR.

Well, if FSL decide to only develop for P3D that’s a shame. I haven’t used P3D in months, and while I haven’t removed it from my computer, it’s a matter of when, not if. It’s taking up a lot of space on my SSD and I really can’t see going back to it after having tasted the MSFS apple...

I missed my PMDG MD-11 when I moved to P3D, but I didn’t keep FSX installed just to use it (I know some did!) The cost in time and money to maintain a single ESP sim was already basically prohibitive. If you want to keep multiple sims installed, knock yourself out. I just don’t have the spare time for it, and I suspect a lot of others don’t either.

And you’re right — I should have caveated it with “almost certainly declining user base” or similar. No, I don’t have numbers. But software is not like fine wine, appreciating in value with the passage of time. P3D has seen periodic, incremental updates, but the fact remains that the core engine is 14 years old. Do you really think it was picking up a lot of new users every month even before MSFS came on the scene?

FSL will make whatever business decision they see fit, but I’m just calling it like I see it, from the stands — making a Concorde for P3D in September 2020 would be a hard decision to make sense of from where I’m sitting.

James

@honanhal, yes, maintaining multiple sims is a pain. It’s one of the reasons I haven’t installed P3Dv5 yet as I still have v3.4 and 4.5. v3.4 is just for Concorde and the scenery looks grim. Plus I have to run my UHD monitor at 1920*1080 for VAS reasons. Doubly grim. But I am prepared to make those sacrifices because of my love of Concorde.

Yes, there is still a lot of legacy code in P3D but an awful lot has been shifted to the GPU and it’s a very different beast to P3Dv1.

Whilst MFS is very pretty I have reservations whether it can cope with supersonic flight. Fr Bill alluded to as much above. Can the scenery be downloaded and rendered quickly enough even at FL280 when the aircraft is at Mach 0.95. 100mph faster than a cruising 747. Totally unknown.

Each to their own. I’m convinced enough people will stay with P3D for their IFR flights. They have too much invested in specialist hardware to switch. Like GoFlight hardware. No drivers for MFS as things stand.

35 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I’ve seen him post frequently and he seems to know what he’s talking about. Treat it as guesswork if you wish. For me it can only be for P3D.

Unless it can be factually proven, it is guesswork.  We just have to wait and see, and not start jumping to conclusions about things that we will find out in due course.

@honanhal I must be really bad at my sim maintenance, like Ray I have kept the older version for Concy but I don't do anything to it, I just choose the sim depending on what I'm going to fly. 

@Ray Proudfoot once MFS is fully featured, I don't think people will stay with P3D for IFR reasons alone, they might decide just not to change sim, but I think most will end up in one or the other.  Even flying IFR you want to come in to land and see buildings where they ought to be especially for you with your UHD monitor!  If there is a Mach limit at the moment then that's a no brainer  though, but I will either be using P3D or MFS not both, so it will depend on the route FSL decide to take. 

Just to speculate, I have read from Umberto and other developers that developing from FSX to MSFS would be "easier" than from P3D to MSFS....FSL is just showing an exterior model screenshot, just exactly what PMDG showed about a month ago with their NG3 for the MSFS.

If I can make a shot here it would be for the MSFS platform.

15 minutes ago, ttbq1 said:

I have read from Umberto and other developers that developing from FSX to MSFS would be "easier" than from P3D to MSFS...

With some caveats:

When pure *programming* is concerned ( Simconnect, C++ Gauges, GDI+, etc. ) then yes, it's probably easier to port a project from FSX to MSFS, because we should "reasonably" expect that MSFS SDK would be improved to a point that it would be at least equivalent to FSX in capabilities.

The PD3 SDK is far more powerful right now, and allows to do things that are surely not possible with MSFS and they will probably never be ( I'm not expecting getting access to DirectX any time soon, if ever, for example ) and there are entire APIs in P3D that simply don't exists in MSFS, and P3D-own Simconnect has like 3 times more functions than FSX, and MSFS is not even at the FSX level, right now. That's just the programming side of things, which matters to create complex add-ons with complex simulations of systems and custom graphic representations.

While we expect the MSFS Simconnect and Gauge interfaces would be brought to parity to the FSX version ( and we are constantly bugging Asobo to be sure it will ), it's not reasonable to expect they would bring features coming from P3D. We might get new and different features, but I don't think we'll ever see an MSFS with an SDK so deep and complete as the P3D one, because the scope of the products is very different, there are things in the P3D SDK that are totally useless for home usage, but matters a lot to professionals, like interfaces with other military simulations across networks, or serious multi-monitor support.

From a *modeling* ( scenery, textures, airplane visual models, etc.. ) point of view, instead, the opposite is true, and it's far easier to convert something from P3D4 to MSFS, as long it was made in PBR using proper PBR methods, because PBR it's PBR ( when done right ), and the same models will just look better in MSFS.

 

1 hour ago, trumpetfrazz1 said:

 

@Ray Proudfoot once MFS is fully featured, I don't think people will stay with P3D for IFR reasons alone, they might decide just not to change sim, but I think most will end up in one or the other.  Even flying IFR you want to come in to land and see buildings where they ought to be especially for you with your UHD monitor!  If there is a Mach limit at the moment then that's a no brainer  though, but I will either be using P3D or MFS not both, so it will depend on the route FSL decide to take. 

They may not have a choice if their internet speed isn’t fast enough. That’s something far less critical with P3D.

But look, it’s not an either or or. You can have both, just one or neither as there’s a Concorde for XP.

Everyone will decide what’s best for them. I’ll have a maximum of two sims. Performance will also be important. It appears to be significantly better in v5 than v4 and of course it now has DX12. How each simulator will develop remains unknown but for now we should just be happy Concorde is “unpaused”. 😀 Good Lord, is there such a word? 🙄

If MSFS will mature into a platform one day that will fully satisfy the needs of serious IFR airliner simmers, AND if the sim will provide the SDK to run complex airplanes such as Concorde with her nuances, I am sure that FS-Labs will take making a Concorde for MSFS into consideration (and if you aren't hardcore and insist on using MSFS, there is a Concorde already announced for December by another developer - I forgot the name). As it stands now, the user interface is barely suitable to fly Concorde realistically in MSFS. For example, in FSX/P3D you can open 2-D subpanels in addition to the VC to work out procedures, which makes it much more convenient to handle the dozens of sub-panels while being able to see the runway. To my knowledge, MSFS no longer offers 2-D subpanels. The control options must become much more versatile and flexible to accommodate a wide variety of yokes and joysticks. And in addition, the weather engine must provide realistic wind- and temperature parameters for supersonic altitudes up to FL600, and not just let the wind blow at 3kts. Oh, and I forgot that you would need a planning tool that takes all of these parameters into consideration for your route. In P3D/FSX, Active Sky gives you that tool.

I am sure there is no one who doesn't hope that MSFS will reach this stage in the future. But the question is, when will it happen, and will it happen at all?  The target customers are the gamers who get a blast from flying over fotorealistic scenery - and blessed they be for it. We don't know how seriously MS will take the hardcore simmers. And as long as P3D provides an open platform for tools and planes that can maximize the realism of IFR flights, and as long as MSFS doesn't, I don't see myself (and I think many more simmers) ditching P3D. Flying Concorde is not primarily about seeing beautiful scenery (which is not that bad in P3D if you use add-ons), but about performing the correct procedures and enjoying the satisfaction of having made it twice as fast as other airplanes and having made a beautiful landing. 😃

 

Edited September 3, 20205 yr by Afterburner

59 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

They may not have a choice if their internet speed isn’t fast enough. That’s something far less critical with P3D.

But look, it’s not an either or or. You can have both, just one or neither as there’s a Concorde for XP.

Everyone will decide what’s best for them. I’ll have a maximum of two sims. Performance will also be important. It appears to be significantly better in v5 than v4 and of course it now has DX12. How each simulator will develop remains unknown but for now we should just be happy Concorde is “unpaused”. 😀 Good Lord, is there such a word? 🙄

It surely buffers data to allow for slower download speeds...?  If not they aren't very clever programmers...! 

It's alright having multiple sims if you have the money to do it....some of us would like to focus on one sim so we can have one set of addons to halve the money being spent!!!  Bearing in mind the money spent on multiple platforms over the past 20 years and the state the world is in at the moment. 

I'm glad you now agree with my sentiments, and no, there is no such word because one used to press play on a tape deck!

18 minutes ago, trumpetfrazz1 said:

It surely buffers data to allow for slower download speeds...?

It does. You can set up a rolling cache to cache downloaded scenery on the fly and you can also download regions manually before and store them.

@trumpetfrazz1, oh to have one sim like the good old days eh? 😀 That’s the problem of having too much. Sometimes it’s not a good thing.

Yes, scenery can be downloaded at slower rates but there is a minimum below which you wouldn’t benefit from it. Flying faster than you can download I suppose.

Anyway, trust me. It’s not being developed for MFS. Of that I’m reasonably certain.