9 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

Legacy code, by definition, is inferior for the MSFS engine.  Asobo is probably just sugar coating it because they don't want to upset the big 3rd party vendors.

There are 2 reasons why legacy code is inferior:

I don't at all mean this in a mean way, but this is just coming from a place of not understanding the underlying implementation of each of the available APIs at all.

The JS (the new) API has a much more modern tooling experience at the moment, and has a much larger featureset, but calls to the engine all have to go through the Coherent GT layer. On the other hand, the WASM/C++ API (termed legacy by some here) has direct engine access in native code, for those APIs that have been ported. So, the ideas you are espousing here are just not matching with reality.

The JS APIs are plenty fast because you aren't normally spending a ton of time hammering the engine with calls, you're spending time in your own code doing your own thing. So the way the two APIs communicate is not a particularly relevant yardstick for the relative speed between the two approaches. And, modern JS engines are basically as fast as native code for almost everything that the code will be doing the majority of the time. But, in a race of who makes engine calls faster, the legacy side wins here (even though, as I stress, I don't think that's a particularly relevant measure).

The real differentiator, right this second, is simply just how much is available on the JS side, and that's a result of Asobo themselves using it to dev the flight decks. The advantages are way less technical than they are developmental: iterating using web tech is just insanely fast. I can lay out a whole attitude indicator in HTML in one day compared to trying to do it all in code by hand in something like webgl or gdi+, and it will be in spitting distance performance-wise provided I'm being as smart coding it as I would be coding the gdi/gl version.

Part of the frustration of watching the third parties go about all this has way less to do with technology and much more to do with knowing how much faster they could develop some of these instruments just by swapping to the modern presentation layer available. But, I get it, it's also a crazy amount of code to port over.

-Matt

Remember FSL,Majestic and PMDG with others have always worked out of the environment simply because the main engine was to week to be used as there standard for home simulations is way way beyond what any platform itself can achieve.  I am pleased they manage to do so.

This knowledge and products is a must for Asobo if they want to be taken seriosly in terms of home simulations at study level and not just as a toy.

I am glad to have them all and see this developement relationship evolve and in the meentime enjoying my hobby even more.

What a great sim time we are given.

Michael Moe

5 hours ago, wthomas33065 said:

2 years:  That's how long it took for the first PMDG aircraft to appear for FSX.  Keep that in mind. 

Keep in mind too that iFly beat them to it with the NG. 🤣

5 minutes ago, Michael Moe said:

...

I am glad to have them all and see this developement relationship evolve and in the meentime enjoying my hobby even more.

What a great sim time we are given.

Yes.

PMDG is a favorite foil here. I don't recall a similar avalanche of speculation when Leonardo made a comparable announcement Friday.

To quote Caesar: "It is what it is." We'll see top tier addons someday, or we won't. I'm betting we will.

What I find a bit more bewildering than the MSFS delay is that the 777 still has not been updated for P3Dv5. I don’t yet own the 777, so I will not buy it until it is ready for v5. 
 

Cheers, Pete

I wonder if rewriting an entire airframe in the new JS API would take just as long as just waiting for WASM capability in the 1st place.

If so, no matter what direction Legacy 3PDs went, we'd see the results in comparable timeframes.

2 hours ago, odourboy said:

Good to know. Given Asobo's record so far, I would not stake my business on their completing a robust API to support the legacy environment needed to run a PMDG aircraft in MSFS. Glad that their other interests can carry them indefinitely.

I am fine with that. I would rather Asobo stick to what they know when it comes to programming and the legacy companies have to get with the times than Asobo now have to know and support their way of doing things and old ways of doing things. That just introduces so much more complexity and room for error into the sim. Sometimes it's better to focus on the current rather than time to incorporate the past.

The fact that MS and Asobo even try to support the PMDG's way of doing things to include them shows they go above and beyond. For PMDG to throw it out there that it's MS and Asobo's fault because of their SDK, well....

I dont really care. Its a niche market in a niche market - those prepared to pay $100+ for a plane. The mid level planes coming out are good enough. I dont use flightsims to simulate pump failures or spend 2 hours planning a route and fuel usage.

46 minutes ago, PilotPete99 said:

What I find a bit more bewildering than the MSFS delay is that the 777 still has not been updated for P3Dv5. I don’t yet own the 777, so I will not buy it until it is ready for v5. 
 

Cheers, Pete

I think we might have some 777 love before 2021.

Its just around the corner

Michael Moe

2 hours ago, jrw4 said:

I wonder, would it be easier for X-Plane developers like Flight Factor, Toliss, Aerobask, etc., to adapt their models to the FS2020 platform, or are their technologies even more distant from those currently provided by Asobo than are those of the FSX/P3D family developers? Yes, I understand that in time, Asobo will create interfaces to the existing FSX/P3D technologies, but as suggested by some of you, there appears to be a 12 month window of opportunity here. The XP market was for a long time significantly smaller than that of the FSX family, but the MSFS marketplace is potentially huge in comparison. The financial incentives seem to be totally different.

 

Those are working on a a340, 777v2, a350v2, 787, and a secret project for x-plane.

Frankly msfs has lots of potential but it is in a hard spot where we all know that it'll take at least 1 year for it to mature.

This is not a decade ago where fsx was alone, other simulators will probably close the graphics gap in the upcoming year and run much faster (on my system), with backward compatibility for aircraft and scenry addons.

4 hours ago, Republic3D said:

Randazzo: "Asobo are working overtime and moving mountains for us, but we will not lift a finger ourselves to be able to sell our $130 airplanes to your user base"

PMDG are behaving like divas. The tools are there if they're willing to work with them. Instead they expect Asobo to take Flight Simulator 2020 back 14 years to 2006 so PMDG doesn't have to write as much code. 
That's bad news for everyone enjoying Flight Simulator at the moment. PMDG needs to adapt to Asobo, not the other way around.

Who exactly are the divas here though? PMDG, who released an honest update, or the people in this forum who twist what they say to no end and speculate and interpret whatever they want simply because it's PMDG bashing time again? All of the other bigger developers have said the same thing multiple times, yet it's only PMDG that that the cynicism is hurled at.

Asobo have said themselves that the SDK for the more complex third-party airplanes we know isn't done. Apparently, it does include tools to get complex airplanes working, which is good to know. But since all major airplane developers are holding off it seems they can't yet fully capitalize on what they need or want to expand to the new platform, whether for technical or business related reasons.

PMDG are working with Asobo the whole way like Aerosoft and some others do and have praised both Asobo's work and the relationships between them and the third-party developers several times. Your claim that PMDG aren't raising a finger just shows the misinformation and speculation in this thread.

4 hours ago, MattNischan said:

This is just a super unfair bit of sarcasm.

As someone who has been knee deep in the existing code base for over 2 months now, I can say that, yes, pretty much every feature you see in the existing PMDG P3D products is possible with the tools as they currently exist. You would need to use a combination of JS and C++, but completely doable.

Whether or not that classifies under a specific definition of "easy" is a language issue: it is certainly possible.

-Matt

 

Agreed. The only minor things remaining in the SDK that can't be worked around are some minor SimConnect/WASM issues that should hopefully be fixed soon, and support for weather/terrain/navdata functions - which aren't a necessity, but useful for implementing custom weather and terrain radar.

The longer they can make people believe it will be before they release for FS2020, the more existing software they can sell, knowing many will double dip.

 

9 hours ago, WestAir said:

Flythemaddog, FSLabs, Majestic, etc are all saying the same thing. Maybe it's not whining. Maybe it's true.

It's just perceived as whining by the community. ASOBO has pretty much created a new sim. They are no flightsim veterans neither. But they work together with experts to deliver high quality addons. Sure this takes time. I don't expect anything of value before 2022. Except for the Aerosoft CRJ maybe.

Edited November 22, 20205 yr by tweekz

I have only A320 while waiting for the release of the 737NG3.