I'm afraid this is a completely nonsensical and circular argument. 

Of course P3D sales are down.  Of course MSFS sales are up.   Starting from zero not so long ago, they only way they can go is up.  Most P3D users already have the add-ons they need and only buy when something new or better comes along.  The developers have see a new sim and have piled all their efforts into selling to a new MSFS market where users don't yet have what they need.  They are following the money.  There are currently very few new products for P3D.

A quick scan of FSElite, which lists new product releases shows page after page of MSFS products and perhaps 1 in 50 for P3D.  How many of the former work in a still bug ridden simulator is anyone's guess.

If and when MSFS gets its house in order and the top quality developers feel able to make products for it without a sub-standard sim undermining their hard-won reputations, then and only then could there be a mass transfer of users from P3D to MSFS.

56 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

One thing LM doesn't have though is the infrastructure to stream satellite/photogrammetry to all the home users of P3D.  Microsoft already had that with Bing, even before MSFS was greenlit.  In many ways, Asobo is piggybacking off of the infrastructure and data that was already built out for Bing.  

Sorry your getting your Tech crossed, it`s Azure Cloud that steams MSFS not Bing, LM own satellites and help NASA LM P3D is not about scenery but flight training and I'm sure MS would love LM to use Azure Cloud streaming that`s what it was designed for to make money not Gaming, Sony may use Cloud for the PS5 in the future more money for MS, but they don`t want Amazon AWS to compete with them.

Edited April 21, 20215 yr by G-RFRY

I think one of the last FlyInside releases used the Bing maps in some way. Is this right?

MSFS has had a 40 year head start and still did not get it right. There's so much wrong with this sim, but I will not go into that, unless you ask me to explain. These threads are ridiculous and useless. They are just a way to spread disinformation. With so many great things to talk about, we chose to talk about the demise of what some here call "legacy sims." Just plain ignorance!

Edited April 21, 20215 yr by DJJose

2 minutes ago, G-RFRY said:

Sorry your getting your Tech crossed, it`s Azure Cloud that steams MSFS not Bing, LM own satellites and help NASA LM P3D is not about scenery but flight training and I'm sure MS would love LM to use Azure Cloud streaming that`s what it was designed for to make money not Gaming, Sony may use Cloud for the PS5 in the future more money for MS, BUT THAY DON 

Ok. I assume though that the original satellite/photogrammetry data is still on Bing servers?  And then that data from Bing is streamed through Azure Cloud?  I don't know the exact structure of Microsoft.  In any case, Microsoft can charge LM for the rights to stream that Bing data.  And then Microsoft can charge LM again to use Azure Cloud.  LM would have to pass the cost off to P3D players somehow (for us users of MSFS, it's free once you purchase your copy of MSFS). 

This is assuming Microsoft even agrees to allow LM access to that Bing satellite/photogrammetry data, which Microsoft may not agree to. In any case, I don't see real time streaming of satellite/photogrammetry coming to P3D anytime soon but if it does, all the better because that's just more choice for us end consumers.

I'm waiting for the first First Person Shooter to incorporate map streaming services. 

16 minutes ago, DJJose said:

These threads are ridiculous and useless. They are just a way to spread disinformation. With so many great things to talk about, we chose to talk about the demise of what some here call "legacy sims." Just plain ignorance!

Some of us don't see it this way.  I love talking about the fate of P3D and X-Plane because I want to see if the business case of IPhone vs Blackberry is being replicated in MSFS vs P3D/X-Plane.   I love talking about this because I also love studying and talking about business.  And what's better than analyzing a business case that is also related to my hobby of flight simming.  This is a great case study and it's also an ongoing case study for me (if you go to business school, you learn about "case studies" day in and day out).  So I am learning a lot from discussing and analyzing what is happening to MSFS/P3D/X-Plane, especially how it relates to business in general.   

And I have also been on the record as saying if X-Plane and P3D can up their game and match MSFS, that's all the better for us end consumers.  So I hope X-Plane and P3D can catch up and match MSFS too, it will benefit us all (if P3D or X-Plane surpass MSFS in the areas of graphics and real time streaming of satellite/photogrammetry for the entire world and the price is cheap, I will be more than happy to jump ship to P3D or X-Plane).

 

 

Edited April 21, 20215 yr by abrams_tank

13 minutes ago, Ricardo41 said:

I'm waiting for the first First Person Shooter to incorporate map streaming services. 

The application of real time streaming of satellite/photogrammetry data for the entire world to other games or even software applications is a huge area that is waiting to be exploited.  I think the only drawback is the resolution of some photogrammetry now, which is not very good, and I assume is related to why we have that "melted" building look.  But as the resolution for photogrammetry improves, I can see so many game companies asking to use that technology because then they don't have to model the real world themselves - they can just use a service that does it for them.

P3D/XPlane vs. MSFS 2020: 

3 hours ago, omarsmak30 said:

I feel sorry for developer like Aeroplane Heaven, in regards to their comment about sound pack, unfortunately Audiokinetic Wwise is a standard nowdays in many games and thus they will need to adopt to it.

The thing is, many of these developers see things in annoying way because they got used to certain way of doing things in previous sims. Now no doubt MSFS has a very steep learning curve but again, this is how it is. Either adopt to it or new developer will jump to it.

Wwise is used a fair bit for games it is true, and it is useful for streamlining the process of making a varied suite of sounds for something like an RPG or a shooter, although having said that, there are alternatives to it.

The issue however, is that as a sound-to-programmer solution, it is better-suited to making the audio for an entire standalone game production -  with a suitably large budget rather than a simpler cottage-industry production - yet its utility is being shoehorned into that far less economically-appropriate application of packaging a few sounds for an aeroplane which is then expected to sell for very much less than a big budget game, and to less people as well.

When nobody familiar with Wwise is willing to take on the small jobs, then developers are forced to learn and adopt it, which is something they can do of course, but is this really something they should need to do when they are only making simple sound sets?

In an RPG or an FP shooter, you will for example want your Glock pistol make a different sound when you rack the slide out in the open as opposed to when doing it in a stone passageway or in a wooden shed, and you'll not want every empty shell case to make the same sound when they hit different floor surfaces and eject and bounce in different directions, so the ability to make all of that kind of sound variety easy for a programmer to implement in Wwise is great. But do flight sim add-on developers really need to be forced into adopting that capability in order to package the sound of a panel button being pressed when it's always in the same direction from the users and so doesn't need fifteen different audio variations? Sure they might need to have the engine sound vary as you move around the plane on the external view, but that's about it for sound variety on an add-on aeroplane.

So it is a bit like asking someone to learn how to drive an eighteen-wheeler with a fifteen-speed manual gearbox in order to get to a shop which they'd previously been able to walk to in under a minute. Yeah they can do it, but it's needlessly over-complicating matters.

I strongly suspect the reality is that using this sound system for MSFS development was more about a game developer which had good reason to utilise Wwise because they were a game developer and were already familiar with it, so they just went with what they knew rather than determining whether it was an appropriate choice down the line, given the way the TPD market works and what it typically needs to do. It smacks of poor consultation with the realities developers face if you ask me, and we know that's something which happened for sure, as evidenced by the dodgy SDK implementation.

Of course one could take the view that it will force out the dinosaurs and the strong will survive, but in all honesty, some of the quirky smaller developers are the ones which are willing to tackle the deHavilland Doves and the Dewoitine 520s etc, and not just always go for the super-popular sure-fire big sellers. Do we really want these creative mavericks to disappear?

The goodwill which the Flight Simulator franchise has always garnered for Microsoft, is borne on the back of a third party infrastructure. It is what gives it longevity. This emerged from lone cottage industry efforts, to enhance the sim. In this sense it practically invented the concept of additional content for a computer game which is now a massive moneyspinner.

Of course things move on and we expect more complex products, which has led to more payware stuff. But making the process for creating these things needlessly more complex and putting what is essentially a pointless obstacle in the way of the process, is just a dumb, thoughtless move which I'm afraid is rapidly becoming one of Asobo's hallmarks.

Edited April 21, 20215 yr by Chock

34 minutes ago, Ricardo41 said:

P3D/XPlane vs. MSFS 2020: 

Haha, excellent pictures of what happened when the IPhone came out in 2007!  In fact, the IPhone not only upset everything for RIM and the Blackberry, but it upset the mobile phone market for other big phone makers, including Nokia.  If you remember back in the 2000s, there were Nokia phone all over the place. I believe Nokia was using the Symbian operating  system for their phones but the Symbian operating system just didn't cut it against the IPhone at first, and then the Android phones that would crop up later.  Nokia eventually had to scramble and they decided to bet on Windows Mobile OS as they way to compete against the IPhone and Android phones.  Unfortunately for Nokia, their Windows Mobile phones didn't work out, even with the merger with Microsoft. 

To me, MSFS entering the flight sim market is a huge game breaker, the same way that IPhone shook up the mobile market back in 2007.  It's obvious that MSFS is much more advanced than P3D and X-Plane in two key areas: graphics and the streaming of real time satellite/photogrammetry for the entire world.

There is one key difference though.  When the IPhone came out in 2007, the basic version was priced at $499 USD, which at that time, was higher than the average smartphone price, if my memory is correct.  I do remember though that a lot of smartphones back in 2007 cost something like $200 to $400 USD so $499 USD for the IPhone was a little more on the expensive side.

However, with MSFS, it's priced at $60 USD, which is comparable to the price of X-Plane and P3D.  Unlike the IPhone, MSFS it isn't really priced at a premium.  That's what makes the case of MSFS that much more remarkable.

Edited April 21, 20215 yr by abrams_tank

Just now, abrams_tank said:

There is one key difference though.  When the IPhone came out in 2007, the basic version was priced at $499 USD, which at that time, was higher than the average smartphone price, if my memory is correct.  I do remember though that a lot of smartphones back in 2007 cost something like $200 to $400 USD so $499 USD for the IPhone was a little more on the expensive side.

Actually there's a more important key difference. MSFS wasn't knocked up using  child labour in China at companies such as Biel Crystal and Suyin electronics. This is not something you can say about Apple's products, including the MacBook and the iPhone produced at that time, and critically, they continue to use some dodgy labour practices to this day.

Apple falsely claimed not to know about this problem originally, but when this was exposed as nonsense and they were pulled up about it, they still took over three years to stop using those companies which were the main offenders because they did not want to lose leverage over their other outsourced suppliers. However, you will notice their prices didn't change much when they stopped using that child labour, which is why you can tell that their product's prices were nothing to do with the technology's function itself being supremely more advanced than other stuff, it was all about putting a massive mark up on things by promoting their brand as being super exclusive. Being so well-known, they could have actually used their position to help those poor people if they'd really had the inclination to do so, and this genuinely would have made their products super-exclusive for a potentially very admirable reason. But nah, they didn't do that, they just decided to go with a bit less of a mark up on things, yet people were still blowing sunshine up Steve Jobs' wazzoo in spite of this.

This is something people continue fall for, particularly with Apple's branding. Still, I'm sure these admirers of the brand will express their outrage at the use of child labour on their favourite social media platform, using their phone or tablet to do so, with its components made by a twelve year-old working an eleven hour shift.

7 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

 It requires servers & bandwidth, and employees to maintain the servers that stream the satellite & photogrammetry data and that costs $$$.

As with all cloud solutions, the bandwidth and hosting costs scale with usage:

Scenario 1:

High bandwidth = High hosting cost = many users = much income -> the outcome is a very favourable income/cost ratio (probably the income being easily 50 to 100 times higher than the hosting cost).

Scenario 2:

Not many user = not much income = low bandwidth needed = low hosting cost -> the income still being much higher than the hosting cost

 

As the ratio usercount / bandwidth typically is constant no matter the dimensions of these figures, also income / cost can be expected to stay constant. 

Edited April 21, 20215 yr by mrueedi

6 hours ago, jarmstro said:

The uncertainty about X-Plane 12 is surely another factor that must be dampening addon sales for XP. Compatibility is my concern.

Aerosoft claims x-plane scenery sales are not really affected, this includes other aircraft developers that claimed the same (some claim even higher sales).

So it depends on what kind of addons we are talking about i.e x-enviro stuff may not be worth buying for now. 

2 minutes ago, mrueedi said:

As with all cloud solutions, the bandwidth and hosting costs scale with usage:

Scenario 1:

High bandwidth = High hosting cost = many users = much income -> the outcome is a very favourable income/cost ratio (probably the income being easily 50 to 100 times higher than the hosting cost).

Scenario 2:

Not many user = not much income = low bandwidth needed = low hosting cost -> the income still being much higher than the hosting cost

But then there is the other problem which is Microsoft giving P3D the satellite/photogrammetry data, which they may not do.  And Microsoft may impose some crippling terms on say, the minimum amount of Azure Cloud that must be used, or something unfavorable to LM.  After all, P3D is a competitor to MSFS and that threatens Microsoft's revenue in MSFS. There is no way Microsoft would make it easy for LM or else MSFS sales/revenue may suffer as a result.