Why scenery developers focus on MSFS instead of P3D?

[GSalden 4,657]

8 minutes ago, micstatic said:

@GSaldenI think I missed the Dayton OH one.  Who makes it?

Realworldscenery 

https://secure.simmarket.com/realworldscenery-dayton-ohio-kday-p3dv5.phtml

[micstatic 4,319]

7 minutes ago, GSalden said:

Realworldscenery 

https://secure.simmarket.com/realworldscenery-dayton-ohio-kday-p3dv5.phtml

thanks man.  Anybody checked it out yet?

[d.tsakiris 418]

4 hours ago, Scottoest said:

The "active" or "frequent" users number would be lower, but that would also be the case for P3D.

Of course. Thing is, in my opinion anyone here would be hard pressed to find realistic sales or user numbers. It'll be interesting to see what the situation is like when the dust has settled, e.g. in a year or so.

[Flic1 976]

2 hours ago, micstatic said:

thanks man.  Anybody checked it out yet?

I had it back in 4.5 but have not updated to the V5 version yet.  I thought they did a great job on it and it looks like it has been improved more for V5....

[Shomron 251]

4 hours ago, GSalden said:

It is good to see that we are seeing P3Dv5 compatible addons appear :

- FT Sydney

- Adelaide Intl

- Ultimate Terrain

- Dayton Ohio

- Helsinki Vanta

- Tenerife Vol 1 + Vol 2

- Barcelona El Prat

And multiple others

 

Who is redoing Barcelona?

[shivers9 1,174]

9 hours ago, Scottoest said:

You know your post history is visible right? 

You know that I don't care right. If folks read my post about this experiment by MS for the last year or so you will see many places where I say that I hope it works out and that it may be the sim of tomorrow but it will be in the future and not at release. No need to respond because I just do not care about your post. 

[Nemo 1,305]

6 hours ago, GSalden said:

It is good to see that we are seeing P3Dv5 compatible addons appear :

- FT Sydney

- Adelaide Intl

- Ultimate Terrain

- Dayton Ohio

- Helsinki Vanta

- Tenerife Vol 1 + Vol 2

- Barcelona El Prat

And multiple others

 

and it seems that we will get ORBX Cityscape Sydney for P3Dv5 too. That will make Sydney a great place to fly with a 747  or  other large birds.

[Gilandred 690]

P3D’s market share will not be as high as it was in the past, and I suspect it was highest prior to the release of XP11.  If third party content creators can make money on a smaller user base, they may very well continue to do so.  However, as all companies operate with limited resources (time, talent and money) they will probably choose the option that offers the most growth potential.  Even if LM stepped up their game significantly with the next release (whether it’s 5.1 or V6), XP will be headed toward their own V12 and MSFS is under active development.  The business case for a robust and growing P3D third party content market just isn’t there, at least in the current competitive landscape.

 

[shivers9 1,174]

9 minutes ago, Gilandred said:

P3D’s market share will not be as high as it was in the past, and I suspect it was highest prior to the release of XP11.  If third party content creators can make money on a smaller user base, they may very well continue to do so.  However, as all companies operate with limited resources (time, talent and money) they will probably choose the option that offers the most growth potential.  Even if LM stepped up their game significantly with the next release (whether it’s 5.1 or V6), XP will be headed toward their own V12 and MSFS is under active development.  The business case for a robust and growing P3D third party content market just isn’t there, at least in the current competitive landscape.

 

While I understand the logic that you are following, there are a couple of things of importance that need to be considered. LM would have never entered the flight sim game if they had to cover their investment from the world of gaming or flight simming...which ever you prefer. LM's primary income from Prepare3d depends on it's commercial use of the product for things like the sim's used by the military (for example the F-35 training program). We now even know that A2A works directly with LM on their future training programs including VR. It is stated so on the A2A website. It just turned out that by allowing us to use the P3d sim provides LM with a great "Proving Ground" and tons of feedback as they move forward. This is a win-win situation for all. 

You said "The business case for a robust and growing P3D third party content market just isn’t there, at least in the current competitive landscape". It is just not valid (IMHO) based on profit and loss because among other things we don't even know the first thing about how much money LM makes on all the different versions of P3D. I suspect that many of those versions and income sources are classified and so they would have to kill us even if they told us! LOL 

[Gilandred 690]

10 minutes ago, shivers9 said:

You said "The business case for a robust and growing P3D third party content market just isn’t there, at least in the current competitive landscape". It is just not valid (IMHO) based on profit and loss because among other things we don't even know the first thing about how much money LM makes on all the different versions of P3D.

The amount of money LM makes is not really relevant to a third party content creator.  My point is simply that LM’s share of the market has shrunk, and any 3PD’s that choose to continue development for P3D will do so with a smaller revenue stream.  If they are happy with that, and more importantly it’s financially viable to them, then so be it.

[GSalden 4,657]

9 minutes ago, Gilandred said:

The amount of money LM makes is not really relevant to a third party content creator.  My point is simply that LM’s share of the market has shrunk, and any 3PD’s that choose to continue development for P3D will do so with a smaller revenue stream.  If they are happy with that, and more importantly it’s financially viable to them, then so be it.

I don’t think so as new P3DV5 compatible addons are being released now after a few weeks of silence.

PMDG who will be releasing new products for P3D only ...

 

[rickgo 64]

 

3 minutes ago, GSalden said:

I don’t think so as new P3DV5 compatible addons are being released now after a few weeks of silence.

PMDG who will be releasing new products for P3D only ...

 

What are they releasing?, as Im still trying to decide on my 1st pmdg product for v5.

[Gilandred 690]

22 minutes ago, GSalden said:

I don’t think so as new P3DV5 compatible addons are being released now after a few weeks of silence.

PMDG who will be releasing new products for P3D only ...

 

I don’t thinks it’s a mutually exclusive position.  These products were likely in development long before MSFS released and the incremental costs of bringing them to the finish line is less than expected revenue (so yes, they will still make some profit, or at least minimize their loss).  PMDG has no other choice than to continue P3D releases as they cannot yet complete development on any other platform.

I don’t doubt there will still be some future P3D development, but the P3D market will neither be as robust nor growing as in the past.

Edited October 10, 2020 by Gilandred

[GSalden 4,657]

1 hour ago, Gilandred said:

I don’t thinks it’s a mutually exclusive position.  These products were likely in development long before MSFS released and the incremental costs of bringing them to the finish line is less than expected revenue (so yes, they will still make some profit, or at least minimize their loss).  PMDG has no other choice than to continue P3D releases as they cannot yet complete development on any other platform.

I don’t doubt there will still be some future P3D development, but the P3D market will neither be as robust nor growing as in the past.

That all depends on how P3D / XP / MSFS will be developed further over the coming years.

At this moment MSFS is a sightseeing app which works the best with slower ac. It looks like sightseeing and eyecandy have a higher priority than complex ac systems. According to Asobo their SDK will never be as enhanced as the P3D SDK. 

P3D is a more general flightsim that also can be used for training as it has a very enhanced SDK that offers a lot of features for complex ac systems and complex airport features.

On XP I cannot comment as I have never used it.

And as scenery compiling into P3D or MSFS starts with the same base they will release them for multiple platforms to gain more money...

[Scottoest 1,561]

Howdy folks,

Happened to be reading a thread on the OrbX forums (discussing their plans or lack thereof for the various sims), and came across a two posts from Ken Hall, an actual scenery developer, and thought of this thread.  It perhaps sheds the first bit of direct light on the sales situation (that I've seen?), and why scenery devs aren't as focused on P3D or XP right now.  I highlighted the relevant bits.

 

Quote

Speaking as a developer, and these are just my thoughts.

MSFS looks better, the lighting is superb.

even though the SDK is far from complete it makes many tasks far less time consuming and have features such as wet runways dynamic lighting so much easier to implement, dynamic lighting does not destroy frame rates.

There satellite imagery in most cases is more than satisfactory especially considering how it generates varying detail ground textures and grasses everywhere. Their autogen is vastly superior, no more hand placement of those cross plane trees that from above were lacking.

As far as aircraft go, I have the mooney and the 182 from carenado and they look and feel very lifelike, I’m not into jets and recognise they have a lot of work to do, in the meantime I am enjoying some of the best VFR flying ever. And ATC and flight planning low level airways with ILS approaches is easy, still not perfect but they are getting there.

As far as sales go, P3D has dropped of the planet, why would I spend a year on something that would not sell when I can make the same airport for MSFS in less time with less hassle and get people buying it.

P3D served as a great sim, as did FSX and FS9. Technology marches on and our flight sim world is finally keeping up with it.

I am more inspired than ever to try to create As best I can to add to this experience.

cheers

Ken

Quote

I can't speak for Orbx, how they approach this is not for me to explain. for me I see MSFS as the future, it's as simple as that. For Xplane to compete they might just do a deal with Google, now that this technology is out there you can bet the other sims will be looking at it. the aircraft and all aspects of MSFS will get much better may even surpass the other sims, even before it was released sales for the other sims dropped off, developers got little warning that it was even in developement, I know some developers who were mid project and then out of nowhere we get the news of it's release, so I guess some developers are being cautious and adopting a wait and see, If what you suggest happens then develoment will continue. Are any of the other companies still developing for P3D and XPlane, I havn't seen anything, plenty of discounts on old stuff but nothing new. personally I spent 2 years developing Boulder and got to sell it for about 4 months, then just like that nothing. I appreciate all the support from customers over the years and I believe the best way to reward that support is to give you better quality at a lower price in the new sim, Porting whats portable and making the new version shine.

cheers

Ken

Thread is here: https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/200909-xplane-11-unfinished-business/