There are some good replies by Mat from Working Title. If what Mat said is 80% correct, it looks like the SDK limitation is minimal and the biggest obstacle is that existing developers are hesitant to adopt new tech stack.

You can find the post here https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/update-on-complex-airliners/364538/13

 

There are more in the original post but below are some highlights. I would say it is likely that we will see some new big players who are better versed in new tech stack coming to the playground. 

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Is every little feature there for every specific developer request? Perhaps not. But the limitations are not nearly so much on the simulator end as everyone keeps assuming. The sim can fully support something as complex as the PMDG 737NG, today, right now.

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This is why I mention the caveat of embracing the new technology stack. These developers are wanting to port their existing legacy C++ code to the new sim with as little code change as possible, and they are correct that that portion of the SDK has some limitations that the new JS/TS/HTML stack does not.

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I don’t fault them for complaining in this case: it puts pressure on MS and Asobo via the community to add resources to the legacy C++ side of the SDK.

That being said, I do really hope that they can get onboard; we’re a ragtag group of freeware devs working in our spare time and look at how much got done in a small handful of months. Imagine what folks working on this full time could do with the new technology.

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I could not disagree more. And I say this as the furthest thing from a language word not allowed. I really, truly, love them all, and I’ve used C, C++, C#, JS, TS, Scala, Java, Python, all at different times in my professional career. But the concept that jitted JS is slower than C++ is a misnomer these days. With as much care avoiding garbage collection as one would apply in C++ avoiding bad allocation strategies, the performance is functionally equivalent, especially for bare calculations where the proper jit is pretty obvious and almost always the same machine code as would be coming out of the C++ compiler.

Obviously, while having raw access to the video hardware can be a benefit in some specific scenarios, there are also a number of spots where the new Coherent GT stack is totally hardware accelerated, like with CSS animations, SVGs, and raw canvas calls.

Raw calculation throughput is rarely the bottleneck anyhow. The sim itself is doing way more work than any aircraft would be. It isn’t like the CPUs in these airliners are the epitome of processing power. If you can’t get fantastic performance in JS/TS in the simulator, I can guarantee it isn’t the language that’s the issue.

 

But then you have FM people like the well respected Pamela Brooker finding, according to Wing42, that ...

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...  while some aspects have been improved upon drastically in the new simulator, some other parts of the aerodynamics simulation seem to have been forgotten. The result is a flight model which needs extreme overdamping of the controls and still results in oversensitivity of rudder, elevator and ailerons.

 

There are entire aspects of the FM missing from this sim at present. For example biplanes are modelled as a pair of wings, not four wings, which is sort of fine if the wings ae a similar size and directly over each other but otherwise .. not so much.

Transonic and supersonic flight conditions do not exist though may be coming.

The modelling of thrust that is not on the centreline is way out meaning twins and also aircraft with high mounted pusher props are very hard to get right.

The modelling of torque reaction, prop wash. asymmetrical wheel loading on the runway and adverse yaw are all out of whack.

The list goes on.

 

You cannot blame all of that on people refusing to give up C++ .

 

Edited February 16, 20215 yr by Glenn Fitzpatrick

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. I doubt all these companies sitting on dev projects on hold are doing it simply because they don’t want to convert code to a different language. While they sit and wait, by all accounts, spending on other sims by the user base has slowed down considerably. So it doesn’t make sense that they wouldn’t put the effort in to get a product to market if they were currently able. They would be shooting themselves in foot in that case I would think.

Solution 1: PMDG decides to re-train or re-hire devs that can work in the new language. They build the NGX from scratch using the new modern code.
                  Released January 2022.

Solution 2: PMDG waits for Asobo to clean up the SDK and allow for legacy code. They port over the NGX and it's good to go.
                  Released January 2022.

Either way... we wait.

Being fairly new to the whole sdk world I cannot speak from what I know of in previous sims as I was just too young or even bothered to check out the toolkits provided beforehand. But looking at the current phase of the sdk and having delved into it in this sim, one thing seems apparent, there are no built in methods for engine logic in regards to turbo props. Apart from that, with a few tutorials under my belt it honestly does seem to be that studios do blow alot out of proportion. If me, a novice can import a blender model in and get a baseline for aero down in a few daily sessions, and if a team like WT or FBW can delve into systems and really push the fidelity up, im left to believe that studio's from older sims just dont want to adjust to the current times of drvelopment. This leaves a gap for newer devs to really take on the market. I know that by contrqst what i am doing is nowhere near the depth of even a base studio like carenado but at the same time its not taken me long to understand and utilize the tools at hand so for larger studios to play the sdk card constantly just seems abit whack, especially for the holy grail that is pmdg which deals in jet turbine engine systems which is pretty well covered in the sdk thus far.

1 hour ago, Armchair Pilot said:

Being fairly new to the whole sdk world I cannot speak from what I know of in previous sims as I was just too young or even bothered to check out the toolkits provided beforehand. But looking at the current phase of the sdk and having delved into it in this sim, one thing seems apparent, there are no built in methods for engine logic in regards to turbo props. Apart from that, with a few tutorials under my belt it honestly does seem to be that studios do blow alot out of proportion. If me, a novice can import a blender model in and get a baseline for aero down in a few daily sessions, and if a team like WT or FBW can delve into systems and really push the fidelity up, im left to believe that studio's from older sims just dont want to adjust to the current times of drvelopment. This leaves a gap for newer devs to really take on the market. I know that by contrqst what i am doing is nowhere near the depth of even a base studio like carenado but at the same time its not taken me long to understand and utilize the tools at hand so for larger studios to play the sdk card constantly just seems abit whack, especially for the holy grail that is pmdg which deals in jet turbine engine systems which is pretty well covered in the sdk thus far.

Nice post.  I guess an organisation selling "study-level" product needs to state openly, our aircraft cannot match the P3D model because at the moment the SDK doesn't provide for X, Y & Z.....so people like me who have no idea of coding etc... can understand and remain patient.

54 minutes ago, YMMB said:

Nice post.  I guess an organisation selling "study-level" product needs to state openly, our aircraft cannot match the P3D model because at the moment the SDK doesn't provide for X, Y & Z.....so people like me who have no idea of coding etc... can understand and remain patient.

Would help if they publicly stated what about the sdk is delaying their progress. Heck, might even get the ball rolling for asobo to look into that key area.

Of course it's something in between.

But i think a chunk of the third parties devs got a bit too used to the static environment that FSX offered for years, followed by a bit less static P3D and now MSFS.

8 hours ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

You cannot blame all of that on people refusing to give up C++ .

I agree with the oversensitivity, but a lot of the shortcomings you just mentioned are not really that relevant to most projects in development.

5 hours ago, WestAir said:

Solution 1: PMDG decides to re-train or re-hire devs that can work in the new language. They build the NGX from scratch using the new modern code.
                  Released January 2022.

Solution 2: PMDG waits for Asobo to clean up the SDK and allow for legacy code. They port over the NGX and it's good to go.
                  Released January 2022.

Either way... we wait.

In fact, I would not be surprised if "Solution 1" takes a lot more than 1-2 years, building an aircraft from scratch is really time-consuming and pointless when Asobo is already working on a compatibility layer.

5 hours ago, Armchair Pilot said:

there are no built in methods for engine logic in regards to turbo props

The whole turboprop engine simulation is broken but scheduled to be fixed at the end of April in Sim Update 4.

Very interested to read how easy you've found the SDK. A lot of noise from old school developers sounds like whining to me, this thread seems to indicate the SDK is perfectly able if lacking in documentation, but developers want to recycle their old code and working methods because products can be ported to market faster.

I don't have an issue with developers wanting a translation/compatibility layer, but don't see how it affects development of all-new projects (and I will have an issue if developers try to charge existing owners silly money for ports when Asobo will have done most of the work, I'm looking at you PMDG...)

Edited February 16, 20215 yr by ckyliu

If you look at the PDMG wikipedia it says 8 employees in several countries.

Probably not full time, dont over estimate their resources because they made nice planes voor FSX.

6 minutes ago, ckyliu said:

The whole turboprop engine simulation is broken but scheduled to be fixed at the end of April in Sim Update 4.

Very interested to read how easy you've found the SDK. A lot of noise from old school developers sounds like whining to me, this thread seems to indicate the SDK is perfectly able if lacking in documentation, but developers want to recycle their old code and working methods because products can be ported to market faster.

I don't have an issue with developers wanting a translation/compatibility layer, but don't see how it affects development of all new projects (and I will have an issue if developers try to charge existing owners silly money for ports, with Asobo having done most of the work, I'm looking at you PMDG...)

I've not seen much in the way of "whining" - I've seen Randazzo acknowledge that the SDK isn't were it needs to be yet for their purposes, and that their timeline will be pushed back as a result.  Most of the more extreme characterizations of the SDK are coming from people on forums like this, not the actual developers.  Speaking transparently about how the SDK isn't quite mature enough yet for your needs morphs into "PMDG SAID THE SDK IS INCOMPLETE GARBAGE".

It's completely understandable that they want to wait for the compatibility layer, and not waste a bunch of time and resources duplicating work, which likely wouldn't save them any time in the end anyway - time they can spend supporting their other products for now.

I'm sure they're as anxious as anyone to get a plane to market on MSFS, because they know how many people are waiting for that first big study level tubeliner, and how much revenue is sitting there waiting to be claimed when they do.

9 hours ago, MegaRiceBall said:

There are some good replies by Mat from Working Title. If what Mat said is 80% correct, it looks like the SDK limitation is minimal and the biggest obstacle is that existing developers are hesitant to adopt new tech stack.

You can find the post here https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/update-on-complex-airliners/364538/13

 

There are more in the original post but below are some highlights. I would say it is likely that we will see some new big players who are better versed in new tech stack coming to the playground. 

 

 

It's been discussed in other threads here at AVSIM.  But based on the information from the Working Title developers and the FBW developers, MSFS should allow for study level planes if the 3rd party developer is willing to use new coding methodologies.  From the Working Title devs and FBW devs, the SDK is quite comprehensive.

The problem is, companies like PDMG don't want to start from scratch. So PDMG wants Asobo to convert as much legacy code as possible so that PDMG's employees don't have to do much work.  I suppose this is a business decision from PDMG.  If PDMG can magically click a button (I'm exaggerating but you get the idea) and their legacy code is converted for MSFS so that their developers don't have to do as much, then this is what PDMG seems to want. 

Edited February 16, 20215 yr by abrams_tank

Accordingly to SDK 0.9.0.0 (but I will check again after today update, if there will be one) this is all that I can find, if I search for "Weather":

"Weather
TODO"

And this is what I can find, if I search about how to customize add-on's UI:

"UI in Microsoft Flight Simulator is developed using modern HTML 5 technologies (HTML, JavaScript, CSS).
At the moment UI is not customizable as part of add-ons, though there are plans to make it possible to include UI elements as part of packages."

Perhaps, I am missing something?

I have no problems in using different languages, I routinely use ALL of them depending on the project on which I work, but it looks than even using the new technologies, a kind of trial-error approach (or hacking) is needed, due to incomplete documentation or missing components in the SDK. And with something hacked / done not in the official way, we never know what happens to the add-on at the next sim update.