Is This The End of Prepar3D v4.5

[micstatic 4,294]

Now Mathijs has really put his credibility on the line.  

[Benjamin J 751]

50 minutes ago, Keven Menard said:

We're already seeing an uptick of people going back to P3D. Let's hope this puts food on the table of some of the devs out there!

As a customer, I have resumed purchases of P3D sceneries. I had a brief encounter with MSFS and liked what I saw in general, but threads such as these one do make it loud and clear that the kind of experience that I'm hoping to get from MSFS is not going to be there anytime soon. I will also add that I was quite disappointed with the age of the data used. I lived in NYC for 6 years and am relatively familiar with the city, and there are numerous prominent buildings missing. I now live in SF and the Salesforce tower, THE icon of SF currently, is no more than an empty pit. Mission Bay, the neighborhood I live in, is the equivalent of what it was perhaps 2 or 3 years ago. I'll be honest: what's there looks nice, but the data is pretty outdated. OrbX's NorCal gives me a much more up-to-date version of SF, even if it doesn't include detailed models for every single building.

That, and that I have been very impressed with P3Dv5. To me, EA almost makes it into a totally new sim. It adds the haze that I've been wanting to see for years now, and it's beautiful and effective!  And so I'm investing again in P3Dv5 compatible sceneries. But I will add that P3Dv5.1 is going to play a pretty significant role in the extent of new purchases I make... EA needs to come out of beta so that it can support full weather control by ASP, and VRAM handling needs to be optimized somehow. For now I'm fine using 1024x1024 textures, but I have noticed a huge limitation on the use of PBR on my system. Really, P3Dv4.4's big innovation (PBR) is nearly impossible to run for me in P3Dv5 because of the VRAM limitation and it doesn't seem like I'll be able to get a new GPU with expanded VRAM anytime soon.

[Dazkent 113]

I am looking forward to see where the P3D v5 journey takes us. I am still mainly using a certain sim that came out in 2006 😉 but bought V4.5 earlier this year and I must admit it is growing on me. At this stage am not interested in MSFS as there are currently no add ons that make it feel like a sim for me personally and i think it will be this way until the SDK is finally finished and developers have got to grips with it ( probably a couple of years away).

I am spending more time than ever in both the 32bit ol sim and the new 64bit one and I for one am happy.

 

 

 

[Christopher Low 5,324]

44 minutes ago, sanh said:

Mathijs over at Aerosoft forums seems to have a different view on the SDK and Asobo's progress......

That's what happens when you jump into bed with someone. All rational thought goes out of the window

Edited October 22, 2020 by Christopher Low

[micstatic 4,294]

I'm still buying for P3DV5.  And planning on getting FSimstudios Vancouver/Halifax, Orbx PBI, TFDi MD11, FSLabs Sharklets, Pacific Cleveland.  Maybe others. 

[chapstick 2,750]

 

6 minutes ago, micstatic said:

I'm still buying for P3DV5.  And planning on getting FSimstudios Vancouver/Halifax, Orbx PBI, TFDi MD11, FSLabs Sharklets, Pacific Cleveland.  Maybe others. 

Similar position, I'm sure I'll start buying for P3D again once 5.1 fixes the SimConnect window CTD.

5.1 + the extended outlook for study-level sims in MSFS will draw people back in. The thing that sucks is knowing we have to pay +$15 for the same scenery in P3D vs. MSFS.

On another note, it'd be interesting to see how the sales of big, airliner-focused airport sceneries are faring in MSFS this month versus August and September. 

Edited October 22, 2020 by Chapstick

[Christopher Low 5,324]

Further to Rob's reply regarding Microsoft's "cut throat" methodology, I could argue that they did the same thing to Dovetail Games. I suspect that they were paid a rather large sum of money for the licence to update the Flight Simulator X engine, and yet there is ample evidence that they were preparing their own assault on the civilian flight simulation market behind the scenes at the same time. I am sure that all of Dovetail's cash came in very handy at a time when senior management were probably reluctant to divert any of Microsoft's mainline assets to what had previously been seen to be a lost cause.

Sorry, my cynical subroutines appear to be malfunctioning. Please stand by.....

[SAS443 1,703]

48 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

Further to Rob's reply regarding Microsoft's "cut throat" methodology, I could argue that they did the same thing to Dovetail Games. I suspect that they were paid a rather large sum of money for the licence to update the Flight Simulator X engine, and yet there is ample evidence that they were preparing their own assault on the civilian flight simulation market behind the scenes at the same time. I am sure that all of Dovetail's cash came in very handy at a time when senior management were probably reluctant to divert any of Microsoft's mainline assets to what had previously been seen to be a lost cause.

Sorry, my cynical subroutines appear to be malfunctioning. Please stand by.....

Dovetail failed with FSW and pulled the plug on April 2018.

"The decision to discontinue Flight Sim World does not come as a light one to the Dovetail team, they said in a statement. The decision comes down to the commercial success of the product so far, making it not viable to continue with development."

One year later in 2019 the licensing agreement with Microsoft was terminated. 

To me it looks like DTG tried to run with their FSX lovechild "Flightsim world" but when that ended up in a financial fiasco the value of said license agreement must've also taken a suibstantial turn for the worse...thus you cut off the cancer I assume?

My speculation only

(btw does anyone remember Dovetail Flight School? 🥰)

[scotchegg 4,156]

5 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Cut throat is NOT malice ... being blind is NOT malice.  Again, it's business, not your definition of malice.

I told you how MS would benefit, you ignored or didn't understand. 

You claimed MS / Asobo (you used both) knew exactly what they were doing in not providing a decent SDK, killing off revenue streams for 3PDs they were at the same time trying to make relationships with, and strangle P3D. Given their clear legal avenues to shut P3D out of the commercial market, it would be totally unnecessary to do this and is clearly malicious (designed to harm) and you also said yourself it was tantamount to “punishment” for the 3PDs.

I never said MSwould not benefit from competition disappearing, you have inferred I don’t understand that because I didn’t touch it. I just find the claim that the SDK’s quality is evidence of malicious competition absurd. 

Also, tiringly it looks like I have to explain that yet again, I have never said you’re wrong about the state of the SDK. You keep pushing it as evidence of MS / Asobo’s evil intentions towards 3PDs and P3D. It’s not. It’s just evidence of a rush job which I imagine was forced on Asobo by bean counters at MS.

You keep trying to deny you said what we can all see you said. You say cutthroat is not the same as malicious when we all know MS / Asobo could achieve the same commercial benefits of elbowing out the competition through legal and morally neutral means. You said you have angst towards MSFS. It seems your beef might be leading you towards paranoia.

Edit; if there were any merit to your accusations, do you think Robert at PMDG would be quietly acquiescing and still publicly bigging up MSFS? From what we all know of him, is he really the kind of guy to take such intentional mistreatment lying down?

Edited October 22, 2020 by scotchegg

[rob0203 686]

Prepar3d 5.1 please! 😘

Edited October 22, 2020 by rob0203

[GSalden 4,650]

5 minutes ago, rob0203 said:

Prepar3d 5.1 please! 😘

In this case P3Dv4.5 : is this the end ? ..

I guess that if V5.1 will be stable + complete EA, it might take the lead over V4.5.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

I'll throw my two cents in on what's happening with the SDK. First of all, an SDK is a convenience that consistently exposes certain features in the sim to 3rd parties. I agree with @scotchegg that SDK was released in an alpha condition because the sim itself was pushed out the door too quickly.

But in addition, certain features like spawning/controlling AI aircraft and weather injection were left out for performance considerations.  It didn't stop REX from injecting weather and I am convinced that the SimConnect AI aircraft functions also can be made to work, even without formal SDK access. But why bother? Every major update to MSFS is likely the break an add-on that is coded in this fashion.

But most 3PDs want to stay on MS's and Asobo's good sides. It doesn't matter if it's either the Dowsons with FSUIPC, A2A or Bob Randazzo. It's a big fertile market and it's not controlled by the 3PDs.

I have no personal experience dealing with Asobo but the folks on FSDeveloper do and Asobo has been accommodating. That's why MCX, AIFP and the alpha of ADE all work with MSFS. There's neither a hidden agenda nor a conspiracy operating to shut out 3PDs. At least I don't see it.

 

[simbol 5,767]

37 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

and I am convinced that the SimConnect AI aircraft functions also can be made to work, even without formal SDK access. But why bother? Every major update to MSFS is likely the break an add-on that is coded in this fashion.

Nope, there are no functions to do what you suggest..

And in terms of hacking into modules, this is not something we A) are allowed to do anymore and B) even if you go astray and do it anyway, it is not economical.

You see with FSX you had a platform that was still.. So if you did memory offsets hacks to inject or manipulate variables, you didn't have to worry about an update being released which would make your addons to cease to function.

Even with P3D, you have at least a stable platform were updates are slower and you get the chance to test things since LM provides access to the releases before hand.

But this is out of the equation with MS, we have zero access to knowledge when they will release an update, we don't have access either to the new update or patches to test such memory offsets or hacks and MS can change anything they want without notifying you... they can release an update weekly if they want making your addons totally obsolete if you go down the path of memory offsets hacks, and the users cannot reject such updates either since there is no option to stay with the previous version for them.

Bear in mind I am part of the MS developing NDA group, so trust me when I say we get zero information or opportunity to test any MS patches.. Hell I had to buy MSFS despite of being signed up as a developer..

So, in answer to your question, to do stuff with this platform, you really need the SDK to open.

S.

Edited October 22, 2020 by simbol

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

5 minutes ago, simbol said:

Nope, there are no functions to do what you suggest..

I believe that this is what I said. I also stand by my statement that even though they are not included in the alpha SDK, the AI functions indeed are there in the sim and can be accessed by your term, "hacking".

MSFS didn't stop REX from implementing WeatherForce in this fashion and until Asobo permanently blocks the REX add-on from working, I also disagree that one is "not allowed to do anymore". As a 3PD you just can't do that and have a working relationship with Asobo. Heck, most of the freeware mods edit the sim's configuration files and technically one is not supposed to do that either. One man's hack is another man's workaround.

[simbol 5,767]

A freeware is totally different from payware, there is no way I would commit to hacks under current circumstances.

Just imagine the hell of complaints when things don't work from paying customers, that is first no way to do business and second no a nice way to treat your loyal customers.

If a freeware cease to work for any reason, well that's bad luck.. But when money is involved it is a different game, you need to commit to support your customers.

If you do hacks, you are not allowed to sell via the market place, meaning no access to Xbox and the juicy promise market.. It is also against the NDA and terms / conditions of all the platform documents that many of  us signed.

Freeware people don't have to worry about these things, nobody is going to sue them or ban them due to breach of Terms and conditions.. 

Running a successful business requires you to stick to certain rules or you risk not only your company reputation, but also the healthy future of your company.

S.