Aerosoft implying that MSFS is the future

[abrams_tank 7,397]

Well, I had a good read from Mathijs Kok at Aerosoft: https://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/topic/157318-a-glass-of-wine-and-mildly-vindictive-ponderings/.  More or less, Mathijs gives his projection of the flight sim market and where it is headed. The most interesting part of his writing was this:

Quote

Even serious P3D users who do not even think about looking at MFS are not buying add-ons right now. There still are a huge amount of FSX users. But for us, they are non-existing as they stopped being commercially interesting in late 2017. There is a serious amount of users of P3D and they were all very willing to buy add-ons, but they stopped buying add-ons in early 2020. X-Plane users are still remarkably interesting as they keep on buying add-ons. Do not be surprised to see X-Plane add-ons being made, they simply sell.

Seems like P3D users stopped purchasing add ons in early 2020.  XPlane users are still buying add ons at the moment so it seems Aerosoft will continue to develop for X-Plane in the meantime.  But in general, the writing is on the wall.  If MSFS keeps advancing, the SDK gets better, and the simulator continues to become more refined, it's in the best interests of 3rd party developers to switch over to MSFS in the longer run (ie. over the next 5 to 10 years). 

[G-RFRY 1,710]

Aerosoft stopped make addon for P3D some time ago Sim Wings who sell through Aerorsoft still are and others are now taking up addons for P3D, LM will continue developing P3D longer than 10 years it is a product for them.

Aerosoft has a vested interest in pushing simmers to MSFS they are partner in the development. 

[tweekz 2,165]

Payware devs go where the market is. Of course that share will shift within the next years.

Some will keep developing for XP, to steer clear from competition. But most popular planes are already released. Only niches left.

Who delivers a decent addon in MSFS will earn himself a fortune.

[DylanC 181]

16 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

Well, I had a good read from Mathijs Kok at Aerosoft: https://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/topic/157318-a-glass-of-wine-and-mildly-vindictive-ponderings/.  More or less, Mathijs gives his projection of the flight sim market and where it is headed. The most interesting part of his writing was this:

Seems like P3D users stopped purchasing add ons in early 2020.  XPlane users are still buying add ons at the moment so it seems Aerosoft will continue to develop for X-Plane in the meantime.  But in general, the writing is on the wall.  If MSFS keeps advancing, the SDK gets better, and the simulator continues to become more refined, it's in the best interests of 3rd party developers to switch over to MSFS in the longer run (ie. over the next 5 to 10 years). 

Actually a great read and although I take Aerosoft's comments about MSFS with a grain of salt since they kind of do have a vested interest on how well the platform does (what @G-RFRY said), some of what Mathis says does ring true for me at least.  The moment we had confirmation that MSFS2020 was going to drop this year, I immediately stopped buying add-ons for P3D.  Then again, I have a ton already anyway.  I'm sure if I were to add up all the money spent supporting P3D and third-party developers, it would probably amount to $5K plus easily.  I don't want to speak for all P3D users, but when you use that platform, more than likely you are a discerning type of simmer who is willing to invest in the experience.  Once MSFS dropped and we saw the fidelity that a modern Flight Sim was capable of, I'm sure there are quite a few of serious P3D simmers started asking themselves some questions like; is investing that type of money in one sim sustainable? 

Yes, I still fly P3D, but I will not invest another penny into it.

[sanh 823]

Its not just where msfs is in relation to p3d today but the rate at which its improving. P3d will do in 2 years what msfs will do in 3-6 months. The advantages of being an entertainment product with a massive budget and team.

[omarsmak30 4,068]

I am waiting now for the storm to come from the P3D fourm lol. Gotta prepare my popcorn 🍿

[Glenn Fitzpatrick 3,798]

5 minutes ago, omarsmak30 said:

Gotta prepare my popcorn 🍿

What LOD are using on the popcorn slider ? Also do you prefer the 3D photogrammetry popcorn or the old school procedurally generated stuff ?

[marsman2020 1,310]

Microsoft has given them a sweetheart deal that no other developer got and the chance to make sure the SDK meets their needs (while possibly not meetings the needs of other developers).

Of course they will have nothing but gushing praise for Microsobo.

I love how he complains that "Lockheed can't make up their mind" in the like yearly or every 6 months updates to P3D.....but Asobo is breaking MSFS every 2 weeks.  What a cognitive dissonance.

All this post does is make sure I will never buy any Aerosoft products.

Edited November 26, 2020 by marsman2020

[omarsmak30 4,068]

But let's see be honest, third party developers will go to where the user base is in order for them to survive regardless on what simulator that is. For example even if LM did some good marketing for their sim in order to expand the user base and awareness, I don't even recall of them having a Twitter account spreading the word there . Now back to MSFS , Microsoft has done super great marketing , believe it or not , many people know about MSFS , even my little brother who has 0 interest in aviation got to know it through twitch and news report. With this kind of marketing, of course the userbase will expand , even if the sim is just a game , some people may like it and some don't. However, with this userbase good chance more and more people will purchase add-ons for MSFS, which will result on thieving business for third party developers .

Edited November 26, 2020 by omarsmak30

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

Xplane still has a chance to fight back, but the clock is ticking and every minute matters right now. P3D is almost dead IMO, only thing keeping it alive is all the great payware planes it had.

Xplane has decent technology behind it, and all it really needs it better trees, better looking water, better day-time lighting engine, slightly better rendering engine, and a tool to build MASS Ortho instead of the WED or Ortho4XP tool, as both were easy to do a single airport, but to use Ortho4XP with proprietary GIS data was a MASSIVE pain. Not speaking of NAIP, but there is still a small (yet significant amount) of state GIS data that remains untapped by all these developers. Unfortunately since the MSFS mesh is locked down and everything is pretty much downscaled and server-side, developers are not able to do 60cm quality mountains and scenery. That said, MSFS looks really good, just the mountains could be a lot better in some places.

The problem with Xplane was they undervalued the payware scenery designers, and did not focus on graphics fidelity enough. They should have budgeted more for graphics, at least a little more, it could have been a lot better as the programmers were actually VERY VERY skilled in many areas.

The scenery gateway was in theory a good idea, but everything looked too generic, what people really want is more customized looking renditions of airports (even if not perfectly exact), and this is where XPLANE failed us. Yes, there were developers building third-party airports, but it was expensive.

 

Edited November 26, 2020 by SceneryFX

[CFIJose 5,485]

This forum never fails to entertain. Thanks guys I needed this.

[abrams_tank 7,397]

1 minute ago, SceneryFX said:

Xplane still has a chance to fight back, but the clock is ticking and every minute matters right now. P3D is almost dead IMO, only thing keeping it alive is all the great payware planes it had.

Xplane has decent technology behind it, and all it really needs it better trees, better looking water, better day-time lighting engine, slightly better rendering engine, and a tool to build MASS Ortho instead of the WED or Ortho4XP tool, as both were easy to do a single airport, but to use Ortho4XP with proprietary GIS data was a MASSIVE pain. Not speaking of NAIP, but there is still a small (yet significant amount) of state GIS data that remains untapped by all these developers. Unfortunately since the MSFS mesh is locked down and everything is pretty much downscaled and server-side, developers are not able to do 60cm quality mountains and scenery. That said, MSFS looks really good, just the mountains could be a lot better in some places.

The problem with Xplane was they undervalued the payware scenery designers, and did not open up the core modeling.

The scenery gateway was in theory a good idea, but everything looked too generic, what people really want is more customized looking renditions of airports (even if not perfectly exact), and this is where XPLANE failed us. Yes, there were developers building third-party airports, but it was expensive.

 

The engine for XPlane is so far behind.  Not sure how they can improve the graphics with an old engine.  

But assuming XPlane can improve the graphics to get closer to MSFS (I doubt XPlane will ever catch MSFS in graphics, the best it can do is narrow the gap), the other problem is getting the data to model the world.  They would have to get it from Google.  If Google charges for it, I don't think that will be feasible for XPlane.  So I think it's in XPlane's best interest to form a partnership with Google.

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

9 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

The engine for XPlane is so far behind.  Not sure how they can improve the graphics with an old engine.  

But assuming XPlane can improve the graphics to get closer to MSFS (I doubt XPlane will ever catch MSFS in graphics, the best it can do is narrow the gap), the other problem is getting the data to model the world.  They would have to get it from Google.  If Google charges for it, I don't think that will be feasible for XPlane.  So I think it's in XPlane's best interest to form a partnership with Google.

I do not think that Xplane's rendering engine is that far behind, they already have PBR and are adding even more functionality, and everything else worked fine, much better than P3D's old FSX port. It supports Vulcan and performed quite well in that last release. It is not so much differences in the engine, it's just the lighting and the talent of the graphic developers that we are seeing. Xplane never hired any really talented graphics devs, Asobo is loaded with graphics people.

There is quite a lot of free GIS data available from states, and some of it is extraordinarily high quality down to 12cm. The problem is, most of it is quite old, most states stopped producing around 2015. Also, the NE is where most of the coverage was, but some significant coverage in the west was available (this is free and would not require Google).

So in reality, Xplane could have done 20% of the US in higher quality than MSFS is right now, and already be streaming it with no licensing fees at all. Fill in the gaps with NAIP temporarily.

Microsoft is also making the same mistake, many of the areas Microsoft released already had better freely available PR scenery in the public domain (again, not speaking of 1m NAIP, talking extremely high res stuff). Yes, it was older, but use the Bing imagery for the underlying asset generation / AI stuff, and fix the bad tiles with whatever they can get. Heck, even 1.2m NAIP looks better than some of the stuff Microsoft is using in areas like Montana and Northern Canada (which is really messed up looking).

 

Edited November 26, 2020 by SceneryFX

[leprechaunlive 1,852]

Actually its quite good, it makes us feel less important than we think we are 😄 to them, we're not people, we're just buyers, walking wallets 😄 Its a nice reality check, and its good that they'r honest about this.

[omarsmak30 4,068]

36 minutes ago, SceneryFX said:

Xplane still has a chance to fight back

I do agree on this, X-Plane is entirely different simulator with different experience (I do love it by the way). For me MSFS is the new son of FSX which sometimes you'd see the elements of FSX in it , for example the usage of simconnect..etc but when I switch to X-Plane is entirely different rewarding experience. Anyway I love both , I am looking forward to X-Plane 12 to see what Austin can bring us as well as MSFS in the future.

Regarding P3D , honestly from my side , meh, for me is no longer there, even before MSFS was released. This is just my personal taste.

Edited November 26, 2020 by omarsmak30