Why scenery developers focus on MSFS instead of P3D?

[JoeFackel 760]

Exactly. Interesting that when the MSFS fan feelings kick in i always just read of "looks", "Scenery" etc. As that is the only one thing a flight(!)simulation has to have.

MSFS is regarding SDK/PDK years behind the funtionality and accessability of P3D. And as far as it looks, and that comes from addon devs, it most likely will never come close to the state P3D has already today.

Maybe thats why some people are mocking MSFS as "scenery simulator".

[CFIJose 5,485]

51 minutes ago, ryanbatcund said:

No surprise there.  P3D was a niche inside a niche.  I had a great time with v4 and previous but even with the current state of the new sim, p3d looks eons old.  I can't go back.  Even xp11... Which was pretty nice, I hardly can go back to that haha.

+1. I can't go back.

[GCBraun 2,390]

1 hour ago, JoeFackel said:

Exactly. Interesting that when the MSFS fan feelings kick in i always just read of "looks", "Scenery" etc. As that is the only one thing a flight(!)simulation has to have.

MSFS is regarding SDK/PDK years behind the funtionality and accessability of P3D. And as far as it looks, and that comes from addon devs, it most likely will never come close to the state P3D has already today.

Maybe thats why some people are mocking MSFS as "scenery simulator".

 

MSFS may be "years behind" P3D on the SDK front, but far ahead of the others on pretty much every other feature.

With that being said, Developers have worked to push the boundaries of native SDK's for years. Some of them, like Majestic, even developed their products partially outside of FSX's/P3D's core simulation engines.

Even if ASOBO would not work to improve the SDK, and that is not the case (see FSLab's most recent comment on the topic here), I still believe that top-tier developers will eventually find a way to offer their advanced jetliners on MSFS.

Edited October 19, 2020 by GCBraun

[d.tsakiris 417]

2 minutes ago, GCBraun said:

MSFS may be "years behind" P3D on the SDK front, but far ahead of the others on pretty much every other feature.

At the moment, I only see it ahead in the scenery and graphics departments.

2 minutes ago, GCBraun said:

Some of them, like Majestic, even developed their products completely outside of FSX's/P3D's core simulation engines.

As far as I know, MJC does use the SDK to realise their outside-of-the-sim engine.

[JoeFackel 760]

12 minutes ago, GCBraun said:

MSFS may be "years behind" P3D on the SDK front, but far ahead of the others on pretty much every other feature.

Uhm, nope. Beside scenery and inbuild live weather there is no "far ahead" in comparsion to stock P3D V5. Get rid of the pink glasses.

Okay, i have to admit: they have intro music. I could also mention they have an "autoupdate" but i could word not allowed up your installation ... if it actually downloads something without forcing to limit your download to 500kB/s ...

And all what i read in the post from Lefteris is ASOBO hast contacted them and he believes they have the talent to develop the SDK further. Thats far from "they will do it" respectivly "MS will let do them".

Edited October 19, 2020 by JoeFackel

[GCBraun 2,390]

4 minutes ago, d.tsakiris said:

At the moment, I only see it ahead in the scenery and graphics departments.

As far as I know, MJC does use the SDK to realise their outside-of-the-sim engine.

Weather, scenery, streaming tech, graphics, marketplace, modding support, UI, developer communication, licesing models, business model.

...and of course Majestic used the SDK! I just mentioned that working to push the envelope and circumvent the limitations of native SDKs is nothing new for flight-sim developers.

[F737MAX 5,553]

4 minutes ago, GCBraun said:

Weather, scenery, streaming tech, graphics, marketplace, modding support, UI, developer communication, licesing models, business model.

Agree with all of that. Just missing the most important feature of a flight sim - the feeling of how an aircraft flies!

It's all just too twitchy in MSFS at the moment. I've turned the sensitivities right down, but all aircraft overreact to any control inputs. There's also the turbulence, which I feel is overdone and the lack of inertia acting on aircraft.
In an attempt to get away from the 'flying on rails' sensation, I feel that Asobo have gone a little too far in the opposite direction.

When the flight modelling is amended, I think you'll rightly be able to call MSFS ahead of other sims on all features.

[d.tsakiris 417]

11 minutes ago, GCBraun said:

Weather, scenery, streaming tech, graphics, marketplace, modding support, UI, developer communication, licesing models, business model.

The first 4 points are practically one: Graphics. I don't see big advantages with MSFS compared to P3D regarding the other points.

14 minutes ago, GCBraun said:

I just mentioned that working to push the envelope and circumvent the limitations of native SDKs is nothing new for flight-sim developers.

That's not what your earlier post sounded like to me. I had the impression you were trying to say that a SDK wasn't so important, because devs had to work outside of it anyway. I don't think MJC circumvented P3D's SDK.

[JoeFackel 760]

17 minutes ago, GCBraun said:

Weather, scenery, streaming tech, graphics, marketplace, modding support, UI, developer communication, licesing models, business model.

Scenery, streaming tech and graphics is ONE thing, no need to stretch that out to three features to let the list look long.

Marketplace ... do you call that an key feature of an high-fidelity sim?

Modding support ... far beyond ... remember small SDK with also bad documentation?

UI ... very subjective, thats again more of that "i don't care about functionality as long as it looks modern" word not allowed.

Developer communication ... yeah, thats good. But it doesn't enhance the simulator, just pets users confidence. 

Licensing model, business model ... care to explain? What substantional is behind these two buzzwords?



 

[JoeFackel 760]

11 minutes ago, F737NG said:

It's all just too twitchy in MSFS at the moment. I've turned the sensitivities right down, but all aircraft overreact to any control inputs. There's also the turbulence, which I feel is overdone and the lack of inertia acting on aircraft.
In an attempt to get away from the 'flying on rails' sensation, I feel that Asobo have gone a little too far in the opposite direction.

You are aware that the "feeling how the plane flies" are just baked-in turbulence effects? If you want you can have these easily in P3D with EzDOK or ChasePlane and IMO they are better than stock MSFS effects because they are set by winds. No wind - nearly no effects. Not like MSFS wobbly flights even when there is no wind.

[micstatic 4,316]

46 minutes ago, GCBraun said:

 

MSFS may be "years behind" P3D on the SDK front, but far ahead of the others on pretty much every other feature.

With that being said, Developers have worked to push the boundaries of native SDK's for years. Some of them, like Majestic, even developed their products completely outside of FSX's/P3D's core simulation engines.

Even if ASOBO would not work to improve the SDK, and that is not the case (see FSLab's most recent comment on the topic here), I still believe that top-tier developers will eventually find a way to offer their advanced jetliners on MSFS.

one massive difference.  Currently developers can't use DLL's.  that's huge

[F737MAX 5,553]

2 minutes ago, JoeFackel said:

You are aware that the "feeling how the plane flies" are just baked-in turbulence effects? If you want you can have these easily in P3D with EzDOK or ChasePlane and IMO they are better than stock MSFS effects because they are set by winds. No wind - nearly no effects. Not like MSFS wobbly flights even when there is no wind.

You're preaching to the choir, Joe.
I am *not* a fan of how aircraft in MSFS fly right now and agree with your view on "wobbly flights" in MSFS.

In P3D, I have ActiveSky, RealTurb and Accu-Feel in combination with head effects using ChasePlane.
That combination gives me the best sensation of flight I have experienced outside of a real PA-28 or C152.

Some of the other elements in MSFS are far ahead of P3D though.

[GCBraun 2,390]

1 hour ago, d.tsakiris said:

The first 4 points are practically one: Graphics. I don't see big advantages with MSFS compared to P3D regarding the other points.

 

1 hour ago, JoeFackel said:

Scenery, streaming tech and graphics is ONE thing, no need to stretch that out to three features to let the list look long.

Marketplace ... do you call that an key feature of an high-fidelity sim?

Modding support ... far beyond ... remember small SDK with also bad documentation?

UI ... very subjective, thats again more of that "i don't care about functionality as long as it looks modern" word not allowed.

Developer communication ... yeah, thats good. But it doesn't enhance the simulator, just pets users confidence. 

Licensing model, business model ... care to explain? What substantional is behind these two buzzwords?



 

The integrated marketplace is a HUGE quality of life feature. Being able to seamlessly install and update all of your add-ons with just a few clicks is great! It seems that some P3D'ers are so used to the FS9 way of doing things (like manually installing/updating content from dozens of different sources) that they fail to see how significant this is.

As for modding support, please take a look of how many relevant projects are currently being developed. The list grows everyday and is quite impressive for a 8 week old Sim. On the other hand, I am not aware of a single relevant modding project for the 10 y.o. P3D that aims to significantly improve one of its default jets.

Regarding licensing, that is also a clear advantage of MSFS. Don't you think the P3D ecosystem would profit if the base sim was available on Steam? Too bad that is not and will never be possible...

Finally, the business model of MSFS is quite clear: a simulator based on the most strategic technologies of Microsoft that is partially supported by a subscription model and DLC purchases built from the ground up for us, the end users. This sounds like a much more interesting approach to me than a simulator developed by a military contractor mainly for corporate costumers. Or perhaps you enjoy the SimDirector feature?

Edited October 19, 2020 by GCBraun

[honanhal 1,420]

22 minutes ago, d.tsakiris said:

The first 4 points are practically one: Graphics. I don't see big advantages with MSFS compared to P3D regarding the other points.

Another way to put it would be "core world engine." It's kind of a big deal!

In P3D, the overwhelming bulk of processor power goes toward "graphics" of one kind or another. Conversely, flight model computations are generally trivial from a processing standpoint. So your world engine has an outsized effect on everything, since you're talking not just about how it looks (which is important in itself) but also how well the whole sim performs. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that world engine is the foundation on which any sim rests.

I've had a lot of practical experience with the ESP engine since FSX. It was clear from the very beginning that, especially compared to FS2004, it was somehow a "sluggish" engine -- the ratio between how good it looked and how it performed was just not great. 14 years and many, many patches and updates later, there are a lot of things that have improved. It uses multiple CPU cores decently efficiently now, for example. But even before MSFS came along to make the contrast crystal clear, the fact remained that performance was always a struggle -- we all threw crazy powerful hardware at it to make it perform decently.

I certainly can't tell you why a given engine performs the way it does compared to other engines. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating...you don't have to be a computer engineer to see for yourself how they stack up in terms of results. The MSFS world engine is a massive improvement over ESP's world engine in nearly every way.

James

[d.tsakiris 417]

23 minutes ago, GCBraun said:

The integrated marketplace is a HUGE quality of life feature. Being able to seamlessly install and update all of your add-ons with just a few clicks is great!

Several, if not most developers offer those functions in their own tools. Besides, freeware still has to be installed and updated manually, if I recall correctly.

23 minutes ago, GCBraun said:

I am not aware of a single relevant modding project for the 10 y.o. P3D that aims to significantly improve one of its default jets

Well...no. P3D got good payware 😄 Ok, jokes aside: I believe there were such projects, but they can't keep up with payware.

27 minutes ago, GCBraun said:

Don't you think the P3D ecosystem would profit if the base sim was available on Steam?

I don't know. I'm afraid the availability on Steam attracts the more "casual" simmer, who's interests don't match my own.

29 minutes ago, GCBraun said:

Finally, the business model of MSFS is quite clear

Theoretically it might be better, but de facto I don't see a big advantage at the moment.

17 minutes ago, honanhal said:

The MSFS world engine is a massive improvement over ESP's world engine in nearly every way.

Yes, the graphics are good, I've admitted to that.