2 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

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

... with the 250 000 000 users!!! 👍😃

2 hours ago, DJJose said:

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!

I remember all the people that said VCRs would never go away. 

2 hours ago, ailchim said:

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

The argument is neither similar nor circular. P3D has seized to be a viable future platform for flightsim development. 

"Coming soon to P3D" Sounds silly, doesn't it?

I have no doubt that folks will continue to buy P3D, or buy addons for P3D. Just as there are still sales of flip phones. 

I'm not sure what proportion of MSFS users have never heard or are barely aware of the main non Microsoft sims but I wouldn't be surprised if it's somewhere between 85-95%. 

And it's not exactly clear sometimes either. 'Wait, Lockheed Martin make a flight sim? And you're not really supposed to use it unless you fly a fire service Huey Cobra in real life?'

They could come out with perfect streaming and zero performance jitters and still wouldn't make much of a dent because of lack of awareness. If I were a newly arrived commercial developer the other platforms wouldn't get a moment's consideration unless I could port with ease. 

44 minutes ago, superspud said:

I'm not sure what proportion of MSFS users have never heard or are barely aware of the main non Microsoft sims but I wouldn't be surprised if it's somewhere between 85-95%. 

And it's not exactly clear sometimes either. 'Wait, Lockheed Martin make a flight sim? And you're not really supposed to use it unless you fly a fire service Huey Cobra in real life?'

They could come out with perfect streaming and zero performance jitters and still wouldn't make much of a dent because of lack of awareness. If I were a newly arrived commercial developer the other platforms wouldn't get a moment's consideration unless I could port with ease. 

 

I do wonder that as well, how representative are we of the wider FlightSim community? What sort of % of users get to the likes of AVSIM and then what sort of % of total spend on add ons comes from people here. Follow the forums here and you pretty quickly hear about the "Must have" add ons, so I guess the amount spent by the average user here is a LOT more than the FS average as a whole.

Companies have the option to be able to sell them in-sim now so they can be found by anyone who cares to browse the store, certainly going to be a sell to them, if sales for p3d add ons are dropping you know exactly where they are going to head.

 

G

1 hour ago, Ricardo41 said:

P3D has seized to be a viable future platform for flightsim development.

Even if that were true, it'll still be years before I could replicate this in MSFS:

 

5 hours ago, ailchim said:

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.

This!

I was thinking "finally admit" to what?

We've been buying addons for years with the prior sims.

Of course prior sim addon sales were gonna tank when a shiny brand spankin new sim released.

I thought this was basic common sense?

I do appreciate devs like DC Designs, Just Flight, Drzewiecki Design and ORBX for their continued support for the prior platforms.

Especially all of the devs who have decided to make tons of products now complete freeware for the older sims.🍻

 

Edited April 21, 20215 yr by blueshark747

3 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

... There is no way Microsoft would make it easy for LM or else MSFS sales/revenue may suffer as a result.

I don't see big revenue for Microsoft. Let's calculate it for just 10 years: $60 for 10 years streaming equals 50 cent per month. For how long will Microsoft give this present to us?

Karl

I think the phone analogy does not quite hold up.

When the iPhone (and later other smartphones) came out, they could do EVERYTHING that Blackberry did - only better, easier to use, more appealing. Instant death blow.

X-Plane still does a lot of things better than MSFS - the only area where MSFS excels is visuals. Quite an important area, admittedly.

If MSFS did everything that X-Plane does, but better - then I would not give X-Plane much chance of surviving.

Right now X-Plane is economically perfectly viable, it still does a lot of things better than MSFS and has much lower operating/development costs.

Third party devs are certainly drawn to the high user numbers of MSFS (together with the lower requirements for good quality). However right now the usage numbers (going by Steam) is about 3 : 1.

The 3rd party situation may change in the future - more addons -> more popularity. But X-Plane 12 will close the visual gap, although it will not have streaming "real world" scenery.

26 minutes ago, Janov said:

I think the phone analogy does not quite hold up.

When the iPhone (and later other smartphones) came out, they could do EVERYTHING that Blackberry did - only better, easier to use, more appealing. Instant death blow.

X-Plane still does a lot of things better than MSFS - the only area where MSFS excels is visuals. Quite an important area, admittedly.

If MSFS did everything that X-Plane does, but better - then I would not give X-Plane much chance of surviving.

Right now X-Plane is economically perfectly viable, it still does a lot of things better than MSFS and has much lower operating/development costs.

Third party devs are certainly drawn to the high user numbers of MSFS (together with the lower requirements for good quality). However right now the usage numbers (going by Steam) is about 3 : 1.

The 3rd party situation may change in the future - more addons -> more popularity. But X-Plane 12 will close the visual gap, although it will not have streaming "real world" scenery.

X-Plane relies on brand loyalty. The question is what happens to brand loyalty if or when the gap is closed or passed  for the areas where X-Plane enjoys an advantage.

55 minutes ago, kaha said:

I don't see big revenue for Microsoft. Let's calculate it for just 10 years: $60 for 10 years streaming equals 50 cent per month. For how long will Microsoft give this present to us?

Karl

I assume we will get 3 years of free satellite/photogrammetry streaming?  3 years is a fair amount of time.  Will Microsoft continue to give us free satellite/photogrammetry streaming after 3 years?  Who knows.  If their sales in the MSFS marketplace continues to be strong with new products being released (ie. future planes from PDMG and FSLabs released in the marketplace, etc), maybe they will give us more than 3 years of free satellite/photogrammetry streaming.  

We also know that Microsoft/Asobo is planning to release new content for sale, such as the helicopter add on in 2022 or whatever the timeline is for that.

Having said that, I think after 3 years, if Microsoft/Asobo decided to charge us for the satellite/photogrammetry streaming, that would be fair game of them to do so, provided the price is reasonable. Obviously, we all hope that they won't charge us for it, that would be the best for MSFS players.

52 minutes ago, Janov said:

X-Plane still does a lot of things better than MSFS - the only area where MSFS excels is visuals. Quite an important area, admittedly.

Neither X-Plane or P3D offer real time streaming of satellite/photogrammetry of the entire world.  This is a big feature that both simulators lack.  And MSFS offers this for $60 USD without a recurring subscription fee.

Downloading TBs of ortho is not the same thing.  With MSFS, I don't have to purchase an extra hard drive just to store ortho data.  Remember, that extra hard drive also costs money.  And then you have to process all that ortho data.  With MSFS, I just pick the place I want to fly, and the real time streaming of satellite/photogrammetry data takes care of the rest.

Edited April 21, 20215 yr by abrams_tank

1 hour ago, Janov said:

The 3rd party situation may change in the future - more addons -> more popularity. But X-Plane 12 will close the visual gap, although it will not have streaming "real world" scenery.

Add ons are really important though.  If 3rd party developers stop new products for X-Plane and release for MSFS instead though, or even increase the products released for MSFS while decreasing the products released for X-Plane, that will probably hurt X-Plane and help MSFS.

One of the reasons Windows Phone failed was because of the lack of apps released for it, whereas app developers released a ton of apps for IPhone after its release.  So X-Plane not getting as many new products, similar to Windows Phone not getting new "apps," is a potential point of demise for X-Plane.

Having said that, one key difference is that X-Plane already has a plethora of 3rd party add ons.  Even if 3rd party developers reduce the number of new products for X-Plane, that doesn't take away the existing 3rd party products that have already been developed for X-Plane.  For Windows Phone, my understanding is that it never built a critical library of apps, something that X-Plane already accomplished.

However, there were a lot of apps released for Blackberry when the IPhone came out.  That didn't stop Blackberry from its demise.  So I guess we will see what happens with X-Plane.  One thing for sure, X-Plane 12 needs to really close the gap with MSFS and close it fast.  If the number of improvements in X-Plane 12 are only "marginal," that's a very bad sign.  Because MSFS will keep adding features and keep improving - MSFS is not standing still either.

Edited April 21, 20215 yr by abrams_tank

1 hour ago, jarmstro said:

X-Plane relies on brand loyalty. The question is what happens to brand loyalty if or when the gap is closed or passed  for the areas where X-Plane enjoys an advantage.

X-plane relies on user experience with the sim. You have a lot of users who will fly X-plane and or PD3 or MSFS, so I don’t see how you find brand loyalty to only substance of X Plane attraction.

If you want an example of brand loyalty, there was a time when there were a number of users who refuse to go the X-plane unless PMDG aircraft move to that platform. Its not an either or with them in spite of Zibo mod being a freeware for their 737-800 and how it handles when it flies when feature are not the point. Or their eagerness to wait for another year or two for their first version anything PMDG to appear on MSFS even if it cost them.

That’s brand loyalty.

I like flying the Zibo mod who was once a PMDG users and nothing has made me go back to them. However, that would make me somewhat loyal to the platform due to the my understanding and appreciation I have for the modeling of the sim. But that just me, not the entire community.

1 hour ago, jarmstro said:

The question is what happens to brand loyalty if or when the gap is closed or passed  for the areas where X-Plane enjoys an advantage.

What happen is there will other gaps that will be created that MSFS have not consider where a simple patch will not be able to close. Just because you can't see what LR is doing and are not talking about it doesn’t meaning they are not working on something.  

Edited April 21, 20215 yr by BobFS88

1 hour ago, abrams_tank said:

... I think after 3 years, if Microsoft/Asobo decided to charge us for the satellite/photogrammetry streaming, that would be fair game of them to do so, provided the price is reasonable. Obviously, we all hope that they won't charge us for it, that would be the best for MSFS players.

I would definitely pay a monthly fee.

Karl