29 minutes ago, Chock said:

There is a vast difference between fixing and tweaking something which already exists, and making something completely from scratch.

Of course, but....data doesn't lie. The Working Title CJ4 FMS is comprised of over 90% hand written code; 6,722 lines of it to be exact. And this is just the FMS. Very little original code is left. I'd be inclined to say that this FMS is not so much a fix or tweak, as it is a replacement.

29 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

I'd love to see a list of "Freeware" A320 features in MSFS and a list of FSLabs A320 features ... I know, those annoying facts and details we all hate to see ...

FBW A320NX MSFS Features: https://github.com/flybywiresim/a32nx/releases

FSLabs A320 MSFS Features: _______________________

If and when FSLabs releases a product for MSFS we can compare notes.

5 minutes ago, cwburnett said:

 

6 minutes ago, cwburnett said:

The Working Title CJ4 FMS is comprised of over 90% hand written code; 6,722 lines of it to be exact. And this is just the FMS. Very little original code is left. I'd be inclined to say that this FMS is not so much a fix or tweak, as it is a replacement.

 

 

The Working Title s another icon among oceans of negativity and drama queens. People who really make A CHANGE. i think people will talk about your contribution for many years, because you are a true heroes, bless you.

8 minutes ago, BackboneOne said:

The Working Title s another icon among oceans of negativity and drama queens. People who really make A CHANGE. i think people will talk about your contribution for many years, because you are a true heroes, bless you.

We appreciate the kind words, but know that our motivation is not noble - rather it is selfish. See, we were as frustrated as anyone by the deficiencies in MSFS - it's just that we decided to do something about it and figured a few other people might be interested also. Turns out we were right, lol... 37,000 downloads. That number blew me away this morning. Our team has joked (I'm not a professional developer, but we have a few pretty senior developers and architects on our team) that this is by far the most popular Github repo they've ever been involved with...

Edited October 28, 20205 yr by cwburnett

No one will come close to the level of FSL A320 paired with GSXv2. 

Target AS but don't be under any illusion about coming close to FSL and the 9-10 years them guys have been working on it and still do.

If you think the mod will match FSL then it says more about you than anything else. You might as well say you think and believe the world is flat.

As for the mod ( not tied it or even the A320n) it's wonderful they are working as hard as they do to make the default so much better and that is a great thing and should be applauded. So should all the moders.

I love and enjoy the CJ4,G3000, G1000 and Roberts Turbo, mods. 

Edited October 28, 20205 yr by Nyxx

25 minutes ago, Nyxx said:

No one will come close to the level of FSL A320 paired with GSXv2. 

Target AS but don't be under any illusion about coming close to FSL and the 9-10 years them guys have been working on it and still do.

If you think the mod will match FSL then it says more about you than anything else. You might as well say you think and believe the world is flat.

As for the mod ( not tied it or even the A320n) it's wonderful they are working as hard as they do to make the default so much better and that is a great thing and should be applauded.

Err - the FlybyWire already looks better.

CJ

59 minutes ago, cwburnett said:

Of course, but....data doesn't lie. The Working Title CJ4 FMS is comprised of over 90% hand written code; 6,722 lines of it to be exact. And this is just the FMS. Very little original code is left. I'd be inclined to say that this FMS is not so much a fix or tweak, as it is a replacement.

I don't doubt that there is a good deal of effort going into stuff, and it is impressive what some of the freeware tweakers out there are doing for sure. I just think people need to be aware that there is quite bit of difference between creating a (decent) payware effort completely from the ground up, and tweaking an extant thing, and not least from an access standpoint.

Quite often, payware developers will have access to a real aeroplane in order to be able to clamber all over it, take measurements and such, then they'll also quite often have access to the files from the company which makes the real thing, and assistance from them too as well as data from test pilots and all that kind of malarkey. This was the case with Asobo on their default models included in the sim and it has quite often been the case with larger developers such as Flight 1, PMDG, FSL, A2A and Just Flight, all of which usually have a real version of the aeroplane available to them when developing an FS model of the thing. For example, if I recall correctly PMDG had a 737 NG from Southwestern which was in for a check made available to them for them to examine in great detail when developing their NG for P3D, Asobo had a Reims F152A for their modeling research for MSFS, and way back when Flight 1 made their ATR-72, the ATR company sent them the engineering drawings and electronic CNC files for the real thing and invited their development team on a jolly to the factory to see the real things being built!

Thus applying tweaks to an existing Asobo MSFS model's systems will indeed require a lot of effort and skill etc, and is undeniably welcome especially given it is done gratis for the benefit of all, but it would all be for nought if there was no actual model to apply this stuff to. So the kind of access which a large developer can benefit from is a not inconsiderable aspect of making an accurate and impressive simulated aeroplane as the starting point for such tweaks.

I suspect most airlines and aeroplane makers would be likely to be helpful if you phoned them up and said: 'Hi, I'm phoning on behalf of Microsoft...' rather than: 'Hi, my name is Al, can I look at your plane please...?' 🤣

Edited October 28, 20205 yr by Chock

With the speed at which they're going, the FBW320 team could and potentially have a better A320 than the FSLabs version. Those guys are doing some things that I'd never thought would be possible and it's only been about 2 months since the release of MSFS.

8 minutes ago, Nyxx said:

9-10 years them guys have been working on it and still do

This is probably the point. This stuff just takes a lot of time and work. There's nothing technological stopping anyone from building anything to any level of detail. It's just a question of work effort. 9-10 years is a pretty long time and one can only assume that translates to many thousands of hours of writing code. To expect that in a few months, or even a year, from part time developers is almost certainly wishful thinking... It's the same reason Aerosoft only goes as far as they do in their Airbus for P3D - the cost vs market potential for going further didn't make sense to them financially.

Maybe the calculus has changed in MSFS, though I doubt it - the market for FSL-level simulation probably hasn't changed much - there's a pretty limited audience that is willing to pay that much for the extra features it offers above the Aerosoft. The fact that it took 9-10 years suggests to me it wasn't a full-time project, but rather those at FSL have "real" jobs and this is a side project - because it couldn't support them financially otherwise.

This isn't a knock on either Aerosoft or FSL - the FSL clearly has more depth - there's no debate at all about that from anyone, even Aerosoft. However, the calculus is that if you say FSL is 100% for $140, and Aerosoft is 75% for $50 and FBW is 50% for $0, people are going to self sort into those buckets and not that many will sort into the FSL bucket...and that probably means that FBW doesn't get there - the deeper the systems the more complex, and frustrating, the code can be. And the more code, the more performance battles you fight (take a look at FPS in the FSL for P3D as exhibit A); and those can be extremely frustrating to try and solve for.

The MSFS world is hopefully big enough for all of these options.

6 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

As the dedicated team at Working Title demonstrates almost daily, a dedicated group of freeware modders can achieve work similar (and in many cases even better work) compared to what payware developers deliver.

Happy Days are here again!

Dream on ...

Making a complex study level aircraft takes a team 1-2 years working 5 days a week 8 hours per day...

You sometimes surprise me with your posts ..

1 minute ago, Chock said:

Quite often, payware developers will have access to a real aeroplane in order to be able to clamber all over it, take measurements and such

You'd be surprised at just how many pilots who fly the real aircraft are willing to poke and prod the airplane for you. We have a former CJ4 pilot on our team, for example, and taking actual measurements and getting real photo and video references of the actual plane and various instrument and FMC edge cases has absolutely been part of our process. Just because we're not making anyone pay for it does not also mean we're just guessing at how things work on a whim. 😉

Maybe we're just lucky that the team that self-assembled did so, and this is a flash in the pan, but it's a talented team for sure. There's room for everyone, commercial and non-commercial, but I think folks will be surprised at what the freeware teams are going to be able to accomplish in the new world, in relatively the same amount of time.

11 minutes ago, GSalden said:

Making a complex study level aircraft takes a team 1-2 years working 5 days a week 8 hours per day...

Honestly asking...which payware add-ons are made by "teams" of full time employees supported only by their add-on products? I'm not aware of any.

It's a part time gig for Leonardo, Majestic, FSL for sure. I don't know about PMDG, but I'd be surprised of they have a team of full time developers... Aerosoft mostly works on a contract basis I believe. Milviz and FlySimWare are part time as well... We're all working from the same handicap - we have to pay the bills and flight simulator add-ons won't do it.

Edited October 28, 20205 yr by cwburnett

4 hours ago, CJ1045 said:

We also have not hit the point where the Xbox version has been released and this is going to force improvements in the default planes by Asobo as mods will be impossible and console owners will not accept broken planes.

As opposed to PC owners, who will ?? 😉

Just now, MattNischan said:

You'd be surprised at just how many pilots who fly the real aircraft are willing to poke and prod the airplane for you. We have a former CJ4 pilot on our team, for example, and taking actual measurements and getting real photo and video references of the actual plane and various instrument and FMC edge cases has absolutely been part of our process. Just because we're not making anyone pay for it does not also mean we're just guessing at how things work on a whim. 😉

Maybe we're just lucky that the team that self-assembled did so, and this is a flash in the pan, but it's a talented team for sure. There's room for everyone, commercial and non-commercial, but I think folks will be surprised at what the freeware teams are going to be able to accomplish in the new world, in relatively the same amount of time.

There are also real life A320 pilots feeding info back to Flybywire. I am sure any Payware companies are seriously considering whether it is worthwhile making any plane that currently has a default plane model in MSFS for fear some mod team will take away their clients, or at least enough so that the economics don't work any more.

 

CJ

12 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

As opposed to PC owners, who will ?? 😉

PC owners can get together to form mod teams. You cannot do that on console as they don't accept mods.

CJ

Edited October 28, 20205 yr by CJ1045