The 3rd Party Dilemna.......

[HiFlyer 9,343]

25 minutes ago, Steve Dra said:

And at $14 for this content....it is an amazing deal when you consider the pricing structure simmer's have been accustomed to over that last few decades.  And if you own the previous version....its $10!  I spent more on lunch today!

Tastes are different, as well as whats important to some of us and not to others.

For the airports thus far, already matched by default or even enhanced airports in the sim, the question is not is there a difference between default and 3rd party.

There is.

The question is, is the difference sufficient, and the airport important enough to you to make the purchase worth it.

To some, the answer will be yes. To many however, I suspect the answer will currently be no, or at best, not yet.

EDIT: A secondary question might be: what could developers do to nudge purchasers from watch-and-wait to, buy now!

(Or heck, maybe sales are phenomenal and no such question is necessary)

Edited September 12, 2020 by HiFlyer

[Phantoms 800]

I understand. If someone came out with a really good KSAV I'd probably buy it, but I don't they'd sell many copies.

[Hoppala29 6]

Well there are so many airports in the sim who are just not good. My home airport (quite large) for example is barely recognizable and I would be happy to get it as payware.

[Paraffin 2,197]

I only fly bush planes, a few vintage radial engine types, and helicopters in flight sims, never an airliner. So that strongly influences what I'll ever spend money on. 

As far as airports go, I might buy my little home airport 0S9 if Orbx ever releases it for MSFS. They might at some point, since it exists as an FSX version so they already have the art assets. I won't buy any major big city or hub airports. The default is good enough for FSEconomy assignments since I usually start and end flights on the runway and don't interact with the airport except at a distance.

I guess the only other payware scenery I might buy would be something like an area package of small bush airstrips in an interesting location. That's never going to be in the default scenery. I've already noticed a few missing in places like Central America that at least exist as runways in XP11 but not in MSFS.

For aircraft models I don't insist on study level for the GA planes, but I'd want better than a basic model for the following:

DC-3
DHC-2 Beaver
DHC-3 Otter
DHC-5 Twin Otter
Pilatus Porter
Pilatus PC-12
Caravan with floats

For helicopters I would prefer something pretty close to a study level model for medium twins. A nice 412, or S-76, S-92, somewhere in that zone with full autopilot and all the other good stuff (but we'll probably get Airbus helos first, given Asobo's location). I'm sure there will be trainers like Robbies, and bigger ones like Sea Kings and CH-47's too at some point, I'm just more interested in the medium twins. That's my sweet spot for helicopter ops.

So that's where my payware money will go. I'm guessing it will be six months to a year and a half or more, before some of this shows up. We already know helicopters are a year out, even for Asobo models. 

 

[kaha 205]

I got LOWI and LOWZ, I live here. And because I frequently fly to LOWW I also got that.

In contrary to how I did in P3D I will be much more carefull not to purchase too many of all those scenery and airport addons that will come to us.

However, I will definitely get some good airplanes, and those are, once and if they arrive:

FSW Falcon 50 and Lear, several A2A planes including that new 2-engine piston, FSLabs Concorde, PMDG DC-6, Milviz Beaver and Otter, Aerosoft TwinOtter and Catalina, Carenado C185F all variants and C337 and C152, Just Flight Canberra and 747-100, Majestic Dash-8, MadDog.

So sorry, that there will be no Duke B60, A2A will have to substitute for it.

Karl

 

[Steve Dra 7,574]

41 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

The question is, is the difference sufficient, and the airport important enough to you to make the purchase worth it.

That is the most important question of course.  And when it's an airport you know you want and will fly in and out of, one of the 1st things you should do is go and play with the default airport and see if it's going to be good enough for you. 

One additional benefit that airports/sceneries have from reputable devs that in some cases, they've improved the performance of the area they're replacing.  Now sometimes this is not true, especially in the last versions of the sim (because basically there was no actual detailed scenery...not like it is in MSFS, and any additions to enhance it came with performance penalties due in most part because of the complexity of the addon...but also because of the poor coding properties they had to work with).

Anyway, I know we all hope we continue to see both free and payware titles hit the market as this sim matures, and we've already seen quick examples of very reputable devs who got it wrong by popping out a title too fast and foolishly thinking we'd be ok with that (cough cough London City)...then pulled it back and released it correctly. 🙂

Other devs however don't seem to change over time. (We all know who).

33 minutes ago, Phantoms said:

I understand. If someone came out with a really good KSAV I'd probably buy it, but I don't they'd sell many copies.

The big devs are very aware of this and sadly as much as they'd like to create an awesome KSAV, you're 100% correct in that they would sell not a lot of copies.  Most of them have noted this many times on their forums with the expected amount of backlash from those who still believe that payware devs can create every airport we ask for and still remain in business. 

Anyone understanding basic economics knows this is foolish, but that doesn't stop them from ranting about why their airport is not being done by anyone.  Enter the freeware modders.  This is where you'll have a chance of getting KSAV.  Will it be as good as payware?  It sure can be (we've all seen the examples)....likely though it will be just be good (or not)...but the price is right. 😉   The key is that if its not good, its our responsibility as simmers who want that scenery to report back to the dev...with constructive feedback, not the other kind that seems to rampant in some places.  If they check their attitude at the door, listen to the feedback and try to fix it, then you have a relationship going, that in my opinion is one of the most important in our community.

OK...I gotta get off this forum and test some new Yosemite freeware an author just published. 😉

 

Edited September 12, 2020 by Steve Dra
missing word

[virtuali 4,419]

1 hour ago, Steve Dra said:

LOL.....from the same mold huh?  I hope you have him coding scenery in MSFS!

Not yet, but he stole my laptop, my Honeycomb yoke, and he's waiting for the Bravo throttle...

[Lon Duncombe 83]

1 hour ago, Steve Dra said:

Our hobby (passion) is a very niche' market....

On the other hand, MSFS has gone mainstream.  With a million customers and counting plus major news coverage on sites such as CNN we are basically niche players. We have little influence on Microsoft.  They are out to please the other 95%.  

[Steve Dra 7,574]

3 minutes ago, virtuali said:

Not yet, but he stole my laptop, my Honeycomb yoke, and he's waiting for the Bravo throttle...

Hehe....tell him when he releases his first title (Put him on the KDFW project please! 😉 )...he can have your throttle!

[ShawnG 1,823]

My thoughts:

- As I've said before in different topics, the defaults do not necessarily look like "the" airport, but they do look like "an" airport, which puts them already above the defaults of all the preceding sims, so I am very much less likely to purchase smaller airports like I have in sims past,  the big hubs are an exception, and I think most of us will continue to buy the Heathrows and Frankfurts, and JFK's,  just because you'll be using them more often.

- Having said that, there is still opportunities to improve these places: the taxiways, parking and gate assignments are all fictional, which makes it hard to navigate the airport with a real world chart.  The night lighting on the default airports is horrendous, and of course, the towers and terminals are generic.

-I think Flightbeam and FSDT very much intended to first release airports that copied included hand built scenery to gauge what the market would do.  Would be interested to know how that went, obviously, they don't have to tell us if they don't want.

-It's possible that the scenery development 3PD's just might need to alter the approach.  A lot of prior sim 3pd airports include a lot of surrounding terrain to  blend out from the airport to the basic landclass that surrounds it, which is less likely to be needed here.  also the default ground aerial is a whole lot better.  this, in theory should mean less modeling and design work needed per airport.  As I said above, I am less likely to buy a smaller regional airport, or vacation destination airport.  But I might be likely to buy, for example, packs of decently done smaller airports.  perhaps to go along with a major hub, there would be 2-3 smaller regional airports that serve that hub, along with regional poi's etc...  just a thought.

-When the new sim was announced, I was thinking that Orbx was going to be left out in the cold with their global products, but after flying in a few areas left bereft of ortho, I'm not so sure.  There will be simmers that can't use the online mode for whatever reasons, and there will be internet outages for the rest of us.  In addition, there's plenty of spots with no ortho coverage, and these places look turrible as is.  If Orbx can patch together a global package of better looking textures for those areas and times, I'd probably buy it.

[tweekz 2,165]

Those apartment blocks on airports make them worse than FSX default airports in some cases. I'd be happy if they could adjust that in a future scenery update.

[Steve Dra 7,574]

1 minute ago, Lon Duncombe said:

On the other hand, MSFS has gone mainstream.  With a million customers and counting plus major news coverage on sites such as CNN we are basically niche players. We have little influence on Microsoft.  They are out to please the other 95%. 

Very true!   But the great thing for commercial vendors is that their customer base has increased at least 10-fold (maybe more, who knows), and business should be really good when their released products get good press...if they deserve it of course.  Kind'a a double-edged sword though....because before MSFS they knew their customers very well, now there is a whole new metric they need to account for. 

They can play it many ways, but I think the smart ones will not try the classic cash grab simply because of a huge increase in their market and possibly unsuspecting folk new to purchasing add-ons for a flight simulator, instead work hard to release new and innovative products that will have even the most critical long-time simmer saying "Wow...this is new and way better". And if we as old, crusty simmers who've literally seen it all, do our job and keep devs honest with getting the word out when a great title is released, and conversely when they try to sell us KRAP (yeah that's the ICAO for Rapid City, hehe), we can see the market (and our hobby) grow in a positive way. 😉

 

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

15 minutes ago, virtuali said:

and he's waiting for the Bravo throttle

Got mine yesterday.  I've already torn it apart, put it back together and I'm testing it as I write the review.  Sorry lads, have to wait for the review for other comments, expect to say that the Bravo Throttle Quadrant sold out in two minutes when it was made available not long ago!  Teaser... working reverser levers are a trip!

 

 

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

15 minutes ago, Lon Duncombe said:

On the other hand, MSFS has gone mainstream.  With a million customers and counting plus major news coverage on sites such as CNN we are basically niche players. We have little influence on Microsoft.  They are out to please the other 95%.  

This has all happened before.  FSX even had advertisements (commercials) playing on regular television. Things will eventually get back to normal, and us regular flight simmers will of course benefit from all of this in many ways.  This is however the first time there has been the present level of collaboration between the MS development team and others, but that may be because it's with Asobo and not MS directly (I hope that continues, it's revenue driven after all).

All the best.

[Steve Dra 7,574]

3 minutes ago, DaveCT2003 said:

Got mine yesterday.  I've already torn it apart, put it back together and I'm testing it as I write the review.  Sorry lads, have to wait for the review for other comments, expect to say that the Bravo Throttle Quadrant sold out in two minutes when it was made available not long ago!  Teaser... working reverser levers are a trip!

 

 

I've hopped into the TBM, heading to KPNS,  I'll text you when I'm on the ground.  I've gotta see this! 🙂 (wakes up and realizes he's still in MSFS) Hehe.