20 minutes ago, peroni said:

Sad to see this reply from Laminar, hopefully I'm reading it the wrong way

https://feedback.x-plane.com/posts/510/inherit-3rd-party-achievements

Integrating or cooperating with a third party would be one of the major improvements going forward (imho) 

No, you are reading it right, and here is why:

Even if an add-on is free, including it into X-Plane may bring legal ramifications and possible support problems with it.

If an add-on is not free, the maker would likely charge a fee to LR for including it - as if EVERY user would buy this add-on. But maybe a lot of users don´t even care for it (like me, I rarely use add-ons) and would not like a higher base price for X-Plane.

In other words - add-ons are a way to "customize" your X-Plane personally. If you like it, buy it - if you don´t you don´t.

Cheers, Jan

 

 

11 hours ago, BigDee said:

1. Yes, but if you count the average numbers from the beginning, you will find an average value of 1037,8 players and a peak average value of 1717,4. That means in last month there were 23,8% more players than on average. April is a senseless point, because if you look on the numbers before April 2020, you can see the number declined to 1100. So what`s the point? I personally don`t care about numbers, but you (Greazer and Flyby) are obviously very much wrong and still insist on it. Iit`s not the topic in here. The topic is called Feature Request & Suggestion Board. You violate the thread repeadetly.

 

 

It's called denial...for those who can't handle the truth...we are not putting a spin on "from the beginning"...we are talking about what is happening now.

Peak users...

• May 2020 ---> 3,910
• June 2020 ---> 3,301
• July 2020 ---> 3,234
• August 2020 ---> 3,174
• September 2020 ---> 2,164 (ouch!!!)
• Last 30 Days ---> 2,164

The only thing being violated here is the truth...but the numbers don't lie.

Just in case you missed it before...https://steamcharts.com/app/269950

On 10/5/2020 at 8:37 PM, mSparks said:

issues? What issues?

Well, let see what Austin has to say about "his" clouds (1:20 mark). He is not in denial, why are you. And what has he done about it???....for years???...nothing. Yep, that is market research for you...

 

 

 

Edited October 7, 20205 yr by FlyBaby

1 hour ago, FlyBaby said:

Well, let see what Austin has to say about "his" clouds (1:20 mark). He is not in denial, why are you. And what has he done about it???....for years???...nothing. Yep, that is market research for you...

So, your request is for better clouds?  I'll forward that to Laminar for you.  Thank you very much for your suggestion!

🙂

2 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

Well, let see what Austin has to say about "his" clouds (1:20 mark). He is not in denial, why are you. And what has he done about it???....for years???...nothing. Yep, that is market research for you...

3d ray marched clouds as in msfs2020 were not considered really scaleable until a few years ago, and now all other games have it, and no reason for x-plane to not follow just like Asobo and any other "industry standarts", just like deffered rendering and PBR and much more.

you are not happy that they didn't approach things in the order *you* wanted them to, but the facts are:

If they knew that in v11 run they are making the move to vulkan, then drawing a new clouds engine has no common sense and good logic, they would need to re-write evertything anyway, double effort, implications:

1) Wasted budget.

2) It would need an SDK -> even longer to develop. and it will obviously break with Vulkan, and bye bye 3pd's investment, and obviously, yours.

So the proper order would be:

1) re-write the engine, fast performance

2) make sure you have stable long-term foundation

3) add new features

4) an obselete SDK that will not break occasionally and protect everybody's investment on whatever addons they got.

 

So "ignore" does not seem the case, it's rather a good strategy to create a next gen rendering engine, MSFS happened to be there first and show first, but i can still see MSFS parts that are legacy techniques and x-plane may do better in it's next version, the joys of technology i guess.

 

 

 

Edit: Not fueling the fire. FlyBaby is right, we are doomed.

The feature I wish would get more clicks is multiplayer. I am kinda surprised that we don´t get more people upvoting better multiplayer - I always make a strong case for it when talking to Ben and Austin (including asking for shared cockpit etc.) but the usual answer is that most people don´t really want it and those that do can work around the current obstacles (setting up IP,s etc.).

Looks like they are right.

Cheers, Jan

Edited October 7, 20205 yr by Janov

What we are missing is how many users have CD or other version, Simple fact is not everyone uses steam so it not a true reflection of xplane users, and laminar dont list percentage of CD, Steam. digital download, that would give us a better clue. Bu ti will come here, makes me feel good.

5 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

Well, let see what Austin has to say about "his" clouds (1:20 mark). He is not in denial, why are you. And what has he done about it???....for years???...nothing. Yep, that is market research for you...

You said issues, not changes made in 11.50.

Volumetric Clouds have issues, we know this because the issue set is common to all the Volumetric Cloud products on the market, including the three for XP, billboards miss some nice features, but issues?

53 minutes ago, Janov said:

but the usual answer is that most people don´t really want it and those that do can work around the current obstacles (setting up IP,s etc.).

VATSIM, AutoATC, PilotEdge, All add MMO capability.

but adding

Isn't a feature I think many would actually request?

I've reopened this thread, but please stay on topic. If you want to argue about sim usage and sales please take it elsewhere, this thread is to discuss sim features and XP12.

15 hours ago, Janov said:

Even if an add-on is free, including it into X-Plane may bring legal ramifications and possible support problems with it.

What if LR and the developer reached an agreement? I bet the majority would be proud to get their work recognized and settle the deal without cash being exchanged. It would be a win-win for Laminar and the users.
The alternative is that the developer after some time loses interest and the add-on eventually dies

 

15 hours ago, Janov said:

If an add-on is not free, the maker would likely charge a fee to LR for including it - as if EVERY user would buy this add-on. But maybe a lot of users don´t even care for it (like me, I rarely use add-ons) and would not like a higher base price for X-Plane.

Ok but depending on what the charge is it might still be a lot cheaper than having Ben develop that software from scratch. So why exclude this possibility without even considering it case by case?

 

1 hour ago, peroni said:

What if LR and the developer reached an agreement? I bet the majority would be proud to get their work recognized and settle the deal without cash being exchanged. It would be a win-win for Laminar and the users.
The alternative is that the developer after some time loses interest and the add-on eventually dies

 

Ok but depending on what the charge is it might still be a lot cheaper than having Ben develop that software from scratch. So why exclude this possibility without even considering it case by case?

 

Yeah, it sounds like it would be a win-win-win (LR-dev-user) situation. I assume it is more complex and there are other factors at play as well. LR is feeling pretty strong about developing things "in house" to control various aspects of it...just look at the way they are about scenery assets. I am sure a lot of people would volunteer to make objects for the airports or landmarks, but they shy away from that for mostly nebulous reasons.

It is kinda like I am when I work on an airport for X-Plane - even if the previous version made by someone else is "pretty good", I often erase all of that to do it "my style". It is easier for me than to alter someone else´s work which is done with a different philosophy in mind.

Talk to a programmer and ask him how it is to work on someone else´s code. I would guess most will flat our refuse it.

I think Laminar wants their X-Plane to be cast in a homogenous way, not looking like lots of different parts got shoehorned in and bolted on. They leave the design open enough for people to develop plugins and add-ons with ease.

I sometimes wish there was a more organized way for a new user to learn about and browse the stuff that is out there. We have some "go to repositories" on the internet (no, avsim isn´t one of them ;-)), but you still need to find them as they are not affiliated with LR. Yet a lot of people fail to even harness the power of a google search (yet try to fly aircraft in an simulator...baffling).

Cheers, Jan

 

 

12 hours ago, akita said:

So the proper order would be:

1) re-write the engine, fast performance

2) make sure you have stable long-term foundation

3) add new features

4) an obselete SDK that will not break occasionally and protect everybody's investment on whatever addons they got.

Not sure if this was your intention, but points 1 to 3 is exactly what Laminar is doing and planning. Implementing Vulkan took Laminar so long because Sidney and Ben rewrote the entire rendering engine around that API and it's also the reason why OpenGL as a backup API has seen a bit of a performacne bump in recent releases. Getting the stability right was why it took 19 releases before 11.50 was declared final.

As for number three, we can only speculate if we are going to see a glimpse of any new stuff in another release in the version 11 cycle, but this sure is slated for version 12 and beyond.

Number four is where you're wrong though. Users technically have no right to working add-ons in future releases, although supporting addons on the other hand is what makes flight simulators so popular (even long beyond their commercial shelf life). Laminar may provide an updated SDK based on third party developer feedback (and they're doing just that), but making stuff work in future releases is entirely up to said third parties.

Bjoern is right. Add-on compatibility is in everyone´s interest...up to a certain point.

Back in the "old" days, every update - at least the major versions - would break aircraft and other add-ons. X-Plane gained notoriety as a "moving target" among third party companies and many shied away from making add-ons for X-Plane.

Austin pretty much was ready to sacrifice backwards compatibility for advancement in new features back then, especially in the early days when progress was still leaps and bounds. Curtailing progress to maintain compatibility would have ment stagnation.

Eventually Ben and Austin agreed that they would declare backward compatibility a design goal of future X-Plane iterations and in the XP10-XP11 run they have done pretty well, I think.

Obviously even the move to Vulkan is still honouring this design goal - there is an OpenGL backward compatibility mode included with 11.50.

There is a time in software development, however, when you need to cut loose the old tarp because it is dragging you down. I believe that X-Plane 12 will require at last Vulkan compatibility from third-party addons, even though there will be some wailing and gnashing of teeth by some users 😁.

Cheers, Jan

20 hours ago, peroni said:

Sad to see this reply from Laminar, hopefully I'm reading it the wrong way

https://feedback.x-plane.com/posts/510/inherit-3rd-party-achievements

Integrating or cooperating with a third party would be one of the major improvements going forward (imho) 

In some areas maybe, but not with everything. Weather modeling for example, is something I strongly believe should be fully developed in the default sim, not something Laminar can just leave to 3rd party devs for improvement.

That's how we got to this current situation with a very simplistic layered weather system, and 3rd party add-ons only provide minimal cosmetic improvement like prettier clouds. 
 

10 hours ago, mSparks said:

Volumetric Clouds have issues, we know this because the issue set is common to all the Volumetric Cloud products on the market, including the three for XP, billboards miss some nice features, but issues?

For me at least, the issues with weather revolve around the fact that we don't have a fully 3D weather system. I can't see a CB over there on the horizon before I get anywhere near it, and change my flight path to fly around it. Or be flying in clear skies and see an overcast cloud bank on the horizon that I gradually into, over, or under. 

Instead, weather is generated in a 360 degree circle with the plane at the center. Transitions can be masked with METAR interpolation. But you can't fly into a weather system or fly out of a weather system, because there is no way to generate more than one iteration of "weather" at a time. 

Austin is on record somewhere, maybe a year or two ago, saying that a 3D weather model is what's needed. He just never got around to making one. 

To be clear, I know our desktop PCs aren't capable of full 3D weather modeling like the supercomputers at NOAA. Regardless, it should be possible to at least generate a weather front, an overcast layer, or a CB as discrete weather, so we're not locked into this model of weather only existing as a 360-degree circle centered on your plane.

3 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

In some areas maybe, but not with everything. Weather modeling for example, is something I strongly believe should be fully developed in the default sim, not something Laminar can just leave to 3rd party devs for improvement.

I was more thinking something like Avitab, Xchecklist, Ground/Marine Traffic, X-Europe, etc