37 minutes ago, virtuali said:

- Their first native product for FSX, the 777, came out in 2013, that is 7 YEARS after FSX original release, and it took ANOTHER 2 years ( 2015 ) before it came out for P3D.

- The 747 QotS came for both FSX and P3D in 2017, that is 11 years after FSX came out.

The difference this time is that none of their 737, 747 or 777 airliners will need to be built from scratch (hopefully). In the next few months, all of them are going to be using PMDG's most up-to-date tech standard. The 737 NG3 had preparatory work performed to shorten the time to market after MSFS' release, contingent on a SDK that gave them the functionality PMDG required.

In no way was it anticipated to take the amount of time you highlighted to bring those three aeroplanes to MSFS.

 

20 hours ago, virtuali said:

What people seem to miss here is that, before MSFS, the user base which once was almost 100% FSX, now became something like 1/3rd each divided between FSX, P3D and XP11, and this made more difficult to break even with any project, because supporting multiple platform surely adds a lot of cost and, the best you can expect is...the SAME sales you made 10 years ago, when FSX was dominant. Because users haven't increased.

That's what MSFS completely changed: for the first time in 14 years, we got lots of NEW users, but since it ALSO cut into the existing P3D and XP ( and FSX ) existing user base, now the situation for the "rest of the sims" it's even worse than before.

Disappointing to read that KORD v2 only received 20% of the original's sales figures, it deserved much more than that. The updated version is still in my personal top 3 airports and I would love to have seen KLAX and KJFK receive the same treatment.

It's very unfortunate for us P3D simmers to read these 'state of the market' comments from another of the established developers. Seems that we'll just have to rely on the smaller developers to fill the gaps.

I want MSFS to succeed, but it needs some quality heavier aircraft and fixes to aircraft handling.
I find it interesting that a few simmers who have previously derided the Aerosoft A320 series as being lacking, are the same ones who now promote the FlyByWire Mod A32N as the next big thing. That's despite it having much less functionality than Aerosoft's and flight control logic that is spotty at best. At least you can have an uneventful landing in an Aerosoft Airbus in P3D.

My concerns are that without a change of direction in by Asobo developers (i.e. stop breaking / making things worse when bug fixing and/or introducing new content) and some quality airliners, these new users won't stick around. All the efforts spent in designing large airport sceneries for MSFS won't be bought and we'll be back were in May 2019 - a fragmented, niche hobby, with tiny numbers, that has ever-increasing prices for add-ons.
 

My personal answer: I've just purchased several p3Dv5 scenery add-ons for 150 € (Black Friday sales) ... Unfortunately, none of them was produced or distributed by Aerosoft.

1 hour ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

The price of the SDK has changed significantly and it's not "just trees".  It's grass, bushes, scrubs, vegetation which consists of about 80% of what you see on this planet in many regions.  Grass implementations I've seen by just about every P3D airport developer are simple 2D planes with textures and transparency in a crisscross pattern.  Since SpeedTrees is procedural, grass could "fill" the entire area in a true 3D sense from all viewing angles ... if optimized well there would be little to no FPS hit, especially with DX12 support.  Don't under estimate what could have been done with SpeedTrees, just don't expect LM to provide that "out of the box" ... LM have always been about providing a core, SDK/PDK, and new features, leaving 3rd party developers to extend that.

https://store.speedtree.com/buy-try/

On a related note, I am a little disappointed with EA (TrueSky), there is more that could be made available that currently isn't.  TrueSky has it's own SDK also, and it's cheap for Indie but there doesn't seem to be the necessary support in P3D V5.x to allow for all that it can do ...

... same for nVidia WaveWorks 2.0 which looks like it's compiled into P3D using gfsdk_waveworks.win64.dll 

https://developer.nvidia.com/waveworks

Lots of potential there and just needs some "refinements" in P3D ... it's a little too foamy in high winds, and too reflective, and no shoreline interaction (remove the very old animated waves from 2005) ... I would like to see LM open up these options so we can adjust.

I see huge potential with the existing feature support, hoping LM open that door wider either via SDK, PDK, or simple XML files ... there is so much they could expose and the P3D SDK/PDK is currently LM's biggest advantage.

Cheers, Rob.

 

 

Yes Rob. And guess what....it has always bin like that with LM. Speed trees, sky, water, buildings, standard airport textures. I do really not believe they will enhance true sky, or better said, I lost trust in them they will ONCE deliver some visual excitement! Once! 

And exactly THAT is what MSFS did. 

I don't vote for sim A or B. 

But I don't like the way LM puts in some good stuff. They simply don't seem to have a fable for doing it amazing. True sky has rainbows, rain shafts, rain visual reduction, lightning, good looking clouds, better lighting compared to currently implemented, smooth better cloud shadows, they are now updating all 2 seconds with moving clouds, horrible, same counts for cloud updating or moving. Sunbeams either, it is a really big mess. If we would do a 1 hour session I can point you at so many issues and needed optimizations. 

The way they do the visuals is really worthless. User turn EA off or buy TOGA textures to enhance the brand new but ugly water from nvidiawaveworks. Amazing isn't it.

7 months passed by.....7 months ugly looking implements. No one can deny that. 

Maybe LM should change a bit of their strategy? Otherwise it is a out of the window thrown investment and I really don't get it. 

I do predict that if 5.2 isn't a major visual overhaul of the faulty looking true sky and water, they will loose more hobby simmers. 

Because probably MSFS does slowly deliver the parts some of us here are missing. They implementet VR in under 6 months! I think DX12 will come Q1 2021. 

LM has to deliver rather earlier than late. The way they did it till now is simply wrong. Bad quality, half baked, to many visual issues, side effects, way too much for 7 months. 

Of course they did sooo much....but don't forget, the eye wants also something beautiful to look at. 

I said it before and still think true sky as it is right now is a disaster. Nvidiawaveworks too.

Waves on rivers as big as in oceans. Why? EVERY SINGLE simmer did spoke about that. And if not, they enhanced it by a mod. 

That is really really sad. You said it, lots of potential. But they did not bring the horsepower on the street. 

I truly am amazed about this ignorance. 

And felt let down by 5.0 AND 5.1 ONLY about the visuals speaking. Performance is great. But NOW I want to see eye candy. 

Marcus

 

Edited November 29, 20205 yr by mpo910

I suspect a lot of this is the hype with MSFS. It has gotten a ton of exposure in the mainstream arena. I bet that will die down over time, and just like always flightsim will be left with those of us "hardcore" users. Those of us who would rather not fly if we don't have an fslabs or a pmdg level aircraft. Aerosoft knows if this is the case then they can just circle back and we will all still buy quality addons. 

4 hours ago, mpo910 said:

Maybe LM should change a bit of their strategy? Otherwise it is a out of the window thrown investment and I really don't get it. 

I do predict that if 5.2 isn't a major visual overhaul of the faulty looking true sky and water, they will loose more hobby simmers. 

Their primary target audience is government and professional training contracts.  Hobbyist needs and desires, unfortunately, take the back seat to what LM needs for their main clients and programs.  When those needs align though, this community at least benefits somewhat (usually).

Edited November 30, 20205 yr by CaptKornDog

12 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

I'll disagree with some of your "complex work" assertations, fixing dynamic lights or adding dynamic lights to an airport isn't a "huge challenge" ... for a seasoned developer maybe 1 day job, for a non-seasoned or even end user maybe a 2-3 day job at a large airport.  PBR materials is more difficult because it's difficult to see how they actually look until viewed "in sim" and that has indeed been a moving target.

Dynamic lights don't work very well if the scenery is not PBR. And, if a scenery was designed assuming NO Dynamic lights, it means it used baked lightmaps, instead of using emissive *just* for emissive, meaning all night textures should be remade as well. An example of such scenery is our KLAX: it's a feast of baked light maps, both on all 3d objects and on ground, so to do a "proper" port, we would have to redo all night textures from scratch, and of course port to PBR, because there is where DL really shines. It will be a remake, like KORD V2, and right now is not the best time,  since the airport is undergoing a massive renovation too.

 

Quote

apparently the new SpeedTree license is $699 (I have not confirmed) and the "for games with less than 100K revenue" is $19/mo (for v8.x, I think LM support v7.x but don't know details on upgrade path).  But the revenue picture you paint would suggest why bother doing anything for P3D or FSX or XP even long before MSFS was a concept? 

I'll surely enquire about this because, it it's true, the price is surely reasonable now.

However, looking at the description of the Indie License, it seems it supports ONLY Unity, Unreal or Lumberyard. Yes, it exports to .FBX, so it would work everywhere but, that option would only create static trees so, it's basically just a library of static trees, like there are many others.

To do "proper" Speedtrees, the ones used natively in the sim, which are optimized, animated, with automatic LOD switching between 3d modeled to static seamlessly, you need the the Speedtree COMPILER, which creates .SRT files that P3D can use natively, and that's only available in the full license I'm afraid.

I already had several discussions with the Speedtree guys, trying to make them understand we are not doing a whole "game", we are doing an add-on for another "game" ( P3D in this case ) that already paid for the full license and it's just not fair that if we used Unity or Unreal, we could get a WAY cheaper price compared to P3D, but they doesn't seem to understand that, and the only thing we came up with, was a "discount" from 6999$ to 5999$, which is still insane just for trees or grass.

Compare that with the incredibly easy to use default trees/grass engine in MSFS, which is part of the product, at ZERO fee...

 

Quote

I would not have spent time on a "collision" system in P3D, heck Asobo have spent ZERO time on a collision system and it has made NO difference to it's sales.  Like you said, it's ALL about the visuals for that market segment.

The MSFS collision system is miles ahead than FSX or P3D ever was. Instead of using a quadtree ( a series of boxes ) or the even more tricky "platform" system, it has a dedicated collision material that can be assigned to a separate mesh, which is what all modern game engine do.

Our custom collision does something a bit different, is more used for optimization than for actual "collisions" ( even if it can work for collisions too ) and while is not full 3d like a mesh, it's more flexible, because we can tie any kind of generic "events" that happens when the user enter in a certain area, and events can be anything: creating or destroying objects, making sounds, start animations, etc.  The good thing about it is that is not tied to the sim, so it could work with both P3D and MSFS.

However, that's due to the help of our software modules, which we are not using in MSFS yet. However, for a "normal" scenery developer using just the plain SDK, the MSFS collision system is way better and easier to use. The P3D collision system is so clunky that, most scenery developers just disable crash on the objects. Once, just as experiment, I tried to increase the resolution of the quadtree, to get more precision, and the fps collapsed...

 

Quote

So when "compatibility" changes started to happen in P3D in order to enhance the visual experience, there was A LOT of resistance (and this is not directed at you specifically, entire dev community) ... "breaking changes" was taboo.  LM tried to minimize the impact as much as possible but apparently not enough and in their efforts they struggle to try to keep a high degree of compatibility ... and it shows today, bugs, issues, anomalies, etc.   It's a catch-22.

The problem is, those breaking changes didn't affect ONLY products using "legacy" method, they affected also those products made using the P3D4 SDK to its fullest, with full PBR and compiled with the native P3D SDK!

In fact, some visual issues affects *only* models in PBR and, even when the problems are minor, we still see a change in rendering from point version to point version. And not when just going from P3D V4 to V5, it happened along all the history of P3D4, the rendering in 4.0 was completely different from the rendering in 4.5, I really hope you won't expect developers updating all their textures for all their products at each point release, that's exactly like throwing money in the garbage, because users will NEVER be prepared to pay for that work.

One of the best things of the MSFS graphic engine is:

- When I do something in Substance Painter and export it, it looks ALMOST THE SAME in MSFS! I can work "blind", instead of exporting 100 times, start the sim 100 times, to tweak textures in Substance because I'm not sure how they'll look in the sim ( that's P3D ), I can just model and paint, and see how the scenery looks like at the end of the day and, chances are, it will look almost perfect at the first try. We arrived at a point that, the rendering is so predictable and so good, that we already know by heart which values for hue, saturation, brightness and roughness we need to use for the most common architectural materials, and they even *match* the industry standard almost verbatim. That's a huge productivity boost, which allowed us to release 5 new sceneries in MSFS in just 3 months, and of course some users said we "rushed them".

No, we haven't, we are just getting advantage of the better engine in the sim which allows us to work fast. People complain the sim takes too much to load ? I don't reload it at all, when I work in 3DS Max or Substance Painter, I just don't use the sim, I work all day with those, export at the end of the day, start the sim once, check the scenery, which I know will probably look fine save for minor tweaks, and go on the next day.

If I need to work in the visual scenery editor, instead, I start the sim at the beginning of a day's work, and I keep it open for the whole day and work with the editor, which I can even use with my 3d mouse, so I can work *very* fast with it too. I can do an "AFCAD" in a fraction of the time I could with ADE, and I can see what I'm doing, and I can perfectly match the AFCAD with the ground textures, so I can make a better job too. We don't have anything remotely comparable with P3D, the only thing that resembles some sort of visual editor in P3D is ( LOL ) GSX...go figure.

 

 

Edited November 30, 20205 yr by virtuali

Thanks very the extensive explanation 👍

4 hours ago, virtuali said:

Dynamic lights don't work very well if the scenery is not PBR. And, if a scenery was designed assuming NO Dynamic lights, it means it used baked lightmaps, instead of using emissive *just* for emissive, meaning all night textures should be remade as well. An example of such scenery is our KLAX: it's a feast of baked light maps, both on all 3d objects and on ground, so to do a "proper" port, we would have to redo all night textures from scratch, and of course port to PBR, because there is where DL really shines. It will be a remake, like KORD V2, and right now is not the best time,  since the airport is undergoing a massive renovation too.

Can't wait for the remake.  One point I'll make.  I've upgraded the lighting at most of your airports that were missing DL.  LAX is no exception.  The inbuilds replacement looks better than not having DL.  

 

I better understand why developpers in msfs2020 are able to create airports so fast

Its always the way the discussions about MSFS end up revolving around its scenery and how "good" it looks.

Its a continual revolution back to the only point people agree on.

It "can look amazing".it can also look worse than P3D or xplane and frequently it does.

One thing that cannot be avoided is as a "flight simulator" its utterly terrible.

People making excuses for a supposed "simulator" becuase it "looks great"..sometimes.

Realistically i dont care if it looks great sometimes beause as a sim its terrible "ALL THE TIME".

It was developed with a hidden SDK, page after page the devs Asobo refused to respond to valid criticism on the flight model which to this very moment is still horrendous particularly the turbulence interface. Aircraft gyrating to the point Elvis would be impressed when passing through air moving in random and bizarre ways defying the laws of physics particularly inertia and momentum.

The aircraft are not worth discussing but are so bad that when Carenado one of the most criticized devs for P3D and xplane release an aircraft people jump all over it like a starving lion.

Lets not talk about the icing which is a figment of some insane Xboxers wildest fantasy gamers imagination.

Dont mind we cant set visibility in the game its like only the most important weather parameter required in a "FLIGHT" simulator.

Devs are jumping all over it as its a new market allowing them to rehash old stuff for a new platform and keep funding coming in. I would be to but id be looking in the rear view mirror because going all in on easi;y the worst "flight simulator" to see the light of day in decades. Note im talking about the "Flight" part.

New devs are flooding simmarket etc with utterly garbage products exploiting a new market ready to fix a "game" that was not even supposed to "need" addon scenery.

Every day there is 5-10 new mmsfs sceneries at simmarket and almost every one is worse than the xplane freeware available at the org. Its worth looking though to see the utter garbage flooding the market.

Remember it wasnt supposed to need addon aircraft with flight models "approved by real pilots" and advanced systems depth blah bah blah.

The 787 wasnt even tested by Beta testers like myself hey what would i know i only fly a 787 for a living and spent 16 years on  the Airbus 320/330

Why would Asobo listen the the several 320 guys on the team and based on all that negative feedback on issues that it released with and STILL HAS the 787 was kept hidden.

Since its release i have bought 5 sceneries for msfs in the same time frame over 25 for P3D with about 8 for xplane plus several new xplane aircraft and 2 new P3D ones.

Like many more serious simmers ive given up on MSFS as an experience its been the most disappointing experience ive had in the sim community assisting several developers over 20 years.

A dev insistent on ignoring EVERYTHING and fixing only the positive aspects of the game leaves a taste not soon to wash out of my mouth.

The Trim system with its exponential acceleration of trim movement that causes rapid huge pitches up and down wen held for more than a second. This was reported about a year ago...still unfixed one of the biggest impediments to a smooth flight. Only a year with report after report.

AS it fades from popularity on xbox after people with gamers get bored of orbits above their homes and normality to some extent returns over the next 6 months and more serious simmers reach the point i reached months ago just like Twitch right now P3D and xplane will return to prominence.

Disenchantment with a litany of rubbish aircraft barely able to function with even the most basic functionality has lead how many to frustration and disappointment?

And devs think the same people who want accurate scenery and great aircraft are going to invest heavily in it?

Like most things in MSFS when you look 'closely" it falls apart rapidly.

The clouds, the buildings, the flight model, the aircraft.

Developers over committing to MSFS will be a huge error as already the people they have built the business on are already returning to P3d and xplane to find new lighting models etc.

By the time Asobo sort half the issues by mid 21 P3D will have an entirely new lighting and weather system.

Its at least nice to see that the teams at Xplane and P3D are not as deaf and blind as those in MSFS.

 

 

 

 

20 minutes ago, DEHowie said:

Its always the way the discussions about MSFS end up revolving around its scenery and how "good" it looks.

Its a continual revolution back to the only point people agree on.

It "can look amazing".it can also look worse than P3D or xplane and frequently it does.

One thing that cannot be avoided is as a "flight simulator" its utterly terrible.

People making excuses for a supposed "simulator" becuase it "looks great"..sometimes.

Realistically i dont care if it looks great sometimes beause as a sim its terrible "ALL THE TIME".

 

 

 

 

 

Of course you are right and I agree! I only compared the visual looks with MSFS at the moment. Like "a goal".

But MSFS will surely mature the next year and afterwards. I just hope we get some better quality looks with P3D as I don´t see a reason then to change platforms (I just want to maintain 1 single platform).

But surely you are right here.

All have their pros and cons. And yes, MSFS as a flight"sim" is hard to imagine at it´s current status and features.

Marcus

But that`s what MSFS is a Scenery simulator first and will be, to get it ready for the XBOX release next year running on DX12 most important remember MS is paying for it and Games pass is the future for them.

1 hour ago, DEHowie said:

Its always the way the discussions about MSFS end up revolving around its scenery and how "good" it looks.

Its a continual revolution back to the only point people agree on.

<snip>

AS it fades from popularity on xbox after people with gamers get bored of orbits above their homes and normality to some extent returns over the next 6 months and more serious simmers reach the point i reached months ago just like Twitch right now P3D and xplane will return to prominence.

Disenchantment with a litany of rubbish aircraft barely able to function with even the most basic functionality has lead how many to frustration and disappointment?

I read that and thought, wow, that's really quite negative.
Try as I might to come up with a convincing rebuttal for any of the points you raised, I cannot. And that's why MSFS is uninstalled from my PC.

I completely agree with your take and I'm concerned that the incentive to get MSFS onto Xbox console will kill the project dead if it is released in any way close to how it is now.
What is so frustrating is how the problems have been identified way back in the alpha. So many basic elements of a flight sim are broken / unrealistic and even long-time boosters have become critical.

P3D 5.1 still has a few problematic issues, but I did a night flight for the first time in several months. V4 would have been very stuttery with what I threw at v5. Instead with EA on, copious amounts of dynamic lighting, complex payware airport, photo scenery with autogen, AI traffic, road traffic, street lights, complex payware aircraft, landing in volumetric fog, it was glorious!

Edited November 30, 20205 yr by F737NG

Great discussion and information in the last few pages! Very good points from many parties. Reminds me of the old Avsim.

Ted

 

11 hours ago, F737NG said:

P3D 5.1 still has a few problematic issues, but I did a night flight for the first time in several months. V4 would have been very stuttery with what I threw at v5. Instead with EA on, copious amounts of dynamic lighting, complex payware airport, photo scenery with autogen, AI traffic, road traffic, street lights, complex payware aircraft, landing in volumetric fog, it was glorious!

Totally agree! P3D 5.1 HF1 is in my opinion, the best P3D yet and makes giant leaps forward. Just looking back not even a year ago where P3D was. It looks so much better, performs extremely well with the same amount of add-ons. I've been investing in add-ons for P3D again. Haven't bought a single MSFS add-on. I do like MSFS, it just has a different purpose for me at the moment, doing sightseeing tours. By the time MSFS gets to the point to support FSLabs, PMDG etc. who knows where P3D will be. The sentiment that's so widespread on the interwebs that P3D will eventually phase out and be replaced by MSFS is not written in stone and P3D is well on their way to keep it that way.