Not sure why people say that this is just a VFR sim

[fppilot 4,339]

19 minutes ago, Gilandred said:

So I think it comes down to sim stability and security, which I’m in no way qualified to speak on.  I don’t think there’s anything nefarious going on here.

There may however be contractual obligations or restrictive licenses that they already entered into.

[Cristi_Neagu 134]

15 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

The fact that after a huge effort some (but not all) devs were able to eventually create functional products absolutely does NOT provide any evidence at all they were "not particularly hampered".

IndiaFoxtrotEcho said:

Quote

We have been silently working in this for months as a research project which generated from our efforts in creating "external" flight models in Microsoft Flight Simulator - the idea being to become capable of creating arbitrary advanced flight models and potentially share them between different simulators.

Unknown to many users, it is possible in MSFS to write your own custom flight model (using C++) and override the MSFS flight model partially or completely (...and btw it is also possible to do that in most modern flight simulators).

So in order to deliver their projects, not only do they have to use all sorts of hacks to get around SDK and API limitations (which, to be honest, it's pretty standard with FSX and P3D), but they are going against what Asobo have said: They do not want third parties overriding the default flight model. So while this shows that Asobo are not planning on making life any easier for third party developers, they actually want to work against them. Also, what's going to happen if Asobo patch that method and a lot of addons will simply break?

Edited May 6, 2021 by Cristi_Neagu

[Cristi_Neagu 134]

3 minutes ago, fppilot said:

There may however be contractual obligations or restrictive licenses that they already entered into.

If that's the case, i really wish they'd just come clean. It will be way better if they just said "Our agreement with Microsoft doesn't allow us to do this" or "We are under restrictions from Garmin and we cannot handle it any other way". My problem is the frustration their contradictory actions generate. If i knew they had no choice, at least i could stop worrying.

[jrw4 623]

Yes, this topic has been discussed to little avail in several previous posts. With regard to the OP's original question, I feel that two points were made, namely that the weather depiction was not sufficiently consistent with current METAR descriptions and that the avionics weren't properly implemented. To some extent, both were true in summer 2020, but there have been significant improvements made in the last six months due to the efforts of MSOBO and add-on developers to meet at least some of the earlier concerns.

Everyone will have a different standard for declaring that MSFS is "IFR capable", much as they do for "study level", but speaking as someone who has had R/W IFR training, MSFS certainly works for me. All of my training was done under that awful "hood", so when I want to practice IFR procedures in MSFS, I use one of the bad weather presets anyway, not live weather. In addition, the CRJ and CJ4 are very challenging instrument platforms, especially if one tries to fly them by hand.

Maybe one day, some of the finer Garmin add-ons will be available on MSFS, as well as the most sophisticated airliner models. Both of these probably will require further elaboration of the SDK and exposure of additional simulation parameters. Given how much of a challenge MSOBO is having making the current sim work reliably, this make take a while, but I have dumped P3d a while ago, and won't be purchasing any further X-Plane add-ons either. Time marches on.

[sd_flyer 6,029]

42 minutes ago, Cristi_Neagu said:

The current state of the SDK and the API do not permit study level addons from being delivered to FS2020. Reality-XP has done his best to get in touch with Asobo in order to not only pass on the requirements he has in order to port his addons to FS2020, but to also offer hid advice on various other topics. He also tried applying for the marketplace. All of his attempts to get in touch with Asobo have, as far as i'm aware, been met with silence, and all community posts asking why he's not being given a response have been similarly ignored. All this while there are addons on the official marketplace who have been widely described as "scams".

There is no such thing as "study level". "Study level" often  defined by user perception. None of commercial add ons we love PMDG, A2A, Flight Factor are approved as study material in real world!

But look at MSFS this way. I'm currently flying Bell 47G right which is study level enough for me! While SDK officially not even support helicopters Flyinside model is in par with "study level" of helicopter like Dream Foill in XP11 or in DCS! Odd isn't it?

[fppilot 4,339]

4 minutes ago, Cristi_Neagu said:

If that's the case, i really wish they'd just come clean. It will be way better if they just said "Our agreement with Microsoft doesn't allow us to do this" or "We are under restrictions from Garmin and we cannot handle it any other way". My problem is the frustration their contradictory actions generate. If i knew they had no choice, at least i could stop worrying.

I believe you misunderstood my post.  I was referring to Asobo and their reluctance or refusal to release a full SDK or otherwise cooperate with some third party developers.

Quote

There may however be contractual obligations or restrictive licenses that they already entered into.

 

Edited May 6, 2021 by fppilot

[Cristi_Neagu 134]

1 minute ago, sd_flyer said:

There is no such thing as "study level". "Study level" often  defined by user perception. None of commercial add ons we love PMDG, A2A, Flight Factor are approved as study material in real world!

Not true. Taken from A2A's website:

Quote

Our Accu-sim software technology is used the world over by pilots and student pilots to aid training and familiarisation at home and in certified and noncertified motion simulations.

PMDG were trying to enter the certified simulator market. I don't know if they ever made it. And Reality-XP XPlane Garmin units are used for certified training, if i remember correctly.

[Gilandred 690]

56 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

So the fact that some of those developers had to pretty much recode the default way the game does things from scratch to get those very functional products, rather than use the SDK and built in code, is evidence they were not hampered ?

That is a little like saying the fact I was forced to demolish most of my house and renovate and rebuild it to a fit state is evidence that the poor state of it when I purchased it did not hamper me in getting it liveable.

The fact that after a huge effort some (but not all) devs were able to eventually create functional products absolutely does NOT provide any evidence at all they were "not particularly hampered".

That is the sort of twisted backward logic that swamps the official forums and makes them near unreadable.  I sometimes wonder if everyone on the official forums is actually 14 years old.

 

 

I think your last statement is uncalled for.  These forums are the exact place for expressing differing viewpoints and opinions, as long as they are respectful.

Regarding your other claims, there have been many developers that have already stated what is, and what is not, limiting their capabilities, and the SDK is no longer one of them.  That includes developing their own custom ways of getting their product into the sim, same as all the other sims.  I don’t think anyone suggested that the current default state is acceptable.

Edited May 6, 2021 by Gilandred

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

I'm just doing a flight in the CJ4 and it's definitely not VFR.

[RXP 2,336]

 

9 hours ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

The "official" reason for the minimalistic Garmins was they did not want to step on the toes of third party developers. They later realised this was a mistake and decided to improve them.

5 hours ago, Gazzareth said:

All that said I find it weird that they then completely freeze out 3rd party weather devs and/or prevented any other apps from reading the weather properly

It is equally weird they freeze out other 3rd party add-ons vendors and they are preventing any other app from interfacing a 3rd party GPS properly in my opinion.

NB: RXP is not impaired to making a Garmin trainer based GTN or GNS in FS2020 but it wouldn't be a RXP product either:

• It won't fly like a Garmin but like a FS2020.
• It won't fly all Garmin leg types properly.
• It won't guarantee latency of operations, i.e. you have to expect delays between touching the screen and visible feedback, sometimes often, sometimes not.
• It won't connect to any of your gauges in your panel except for a few of them, sometimes working, sometimes not (i.e. no deviation on the HSI for example).

Please understand this is not an unsolvable technical problem:

• XP11 SDK is natively supporting creating 3rd party GPS products so much, it doesn't require any hacks at all. Just pure SDK.
• FS/P3D SDK doesn't support any of the above natively but we can supplement the deficiencies in patching the code at runtime. These are not very complex patches either, just a few missing features easily plugged in where it should.
• FS2020 SDK is exactly the same as FS/P3D SDK (gauge and systems C++ part of the SDK), but we can't augment it nor supplement it's deficiencies. We've offered to share our source code with Microsoft/Asobo, and to actively help them and sharing our 20 years old expertise, but they are not answering our phone calls nor our emails, even if we're under NDA.

LR developers are also making an excellent set of default Garmin devices available in the simulator (GNS + G1000). The stock devices are so good they are sufficient for FAA approved training, and LR developers are not shy of sharing their pride about their Garmin devices. Nevertheless, LR has always been supporting 3rd party offering like RXP Garmin so that their customers get more choices.

 

[RXP 2,336]

1 hour ago, Bigbluss said:

PMDG released statement saying that the SDK isn't holding them back, and it's just a matter of getting up to speed with new development tools.

I'm certain any 3rd party vendor working daily with Asobo developers directly wouldn't find any major problem in the SDK holding them back, because they would be able to work hand-in-hand with Asobo developers directly to solve any problem holding them back.

[omarsmak30 4,065]

7 minutes ago, RXP said:

• XP11 SDK is natively supporting creating 3rd party GPS products so much, it doesn't require any hacks at all. Just pure SDK.
• FS/P3D SDK doesn't support any of the above natively but we can supplement the deficiencies in patching the code at runtime. These are not very complex patches either, just a few missing features easily plugged in where it should.
• FS2020 SDK is exactly the same as FS/P3D SDK (gauge and systems C++ part of the SDK), but we can't augment it nor supplement it's deficiencies. We've offered to share our source code with Microsoft/Asobo, and to actively help them and sharing our 20 years old expertise, but they are not answering our phone calls nor our emails, even if we're under NDA.

If someone asks me like really, X-Plane is truly a friendly for third party developers, not P3D nether MSFS, this is what I love about XP ecosystem, you literally can write your add-one in Lua, C++ or even in Java using the JVM plugin for XP. 

In regards to MSFS, as I said before, I have no idea why Asobo chose to get that legacy Simconnect APIs into MSFS and didn't get to create a complete proper APIs from the scratch, now as result, MSFS inherits the same issues as P3D/FSX plus the closeness of the platform which I sympathize with @RXP.

I hope at some point of time in the future, Asobo will slowly drop these legacy Simconnect APIs and introduce more flexible APIs which could help third party developers to more forward in better way. 

[Gilandred 690]

21 minutes ago, RXP said:

 

It is equally weird they freeze out other 3rd party add-ons vendors and they are preventing any other app from interfacing a 3rd party GPS properly in my opinion.

One of the top voted threads on the msfs official forums was to work directly with the FBW team on their A320, and by most accounts this has resulted in a fruitful partnership.  Perhaps this is the way to approach the situation if your attempts to contact them directly have failed.  If you can get enough community support then at the very least it should be addressed on a monthly Q&A.

[Cristi_Neagu 134]

1 minute ago, omarsmak30 said:

I have no idea why Asobo chose to get that legacy Simconnect APIs into MSFS and didn't get to create a complete proper APIs from the scratch

My guess, as uninformed as it may be, is because third party addons was never their main focus. I don't think Asobo was very familiar at all with the flight simulation community when they went into this. I saw Martial's presentation, describing how they used cloud services to create FS2020, and the impression i got was that they realised that they could recreate the entire planet in a game, and what better use for that than a flight simulator. Somehow they teamed up with Microsoft (probably because Microsoft is the only company that owns: a maps service, a cloud service, a legacy flight simulator) and that's how they inherited FSX code. So my impression is that they entered flight simulation without being familiar with the community, without understanding how absolutely vital third party developers are, and that the people who hang around the longest are the people interested in realism. So for them, the SDK and API have always been secondary, just something inherited from FSX, and if it wasn't for Microsoft and their XBox plans, it's very likely that Asobo would have left the SDK 100% untouched. I think Microsoft pressured them into sandboxing addons, which led to JS/HTML and WASM.

As for them dropping Simmconnect... I don't think it will happen. Maybe in FS2030. But I don't see them changing the paradigm with FS2020, especially since they're having so much trouble even delivering what they said they will deliver, let alone rip the whole thing out. And if they ever do build an entirely new API, it will probably not be what anyone hopes for. It will probably be very limited and very restrictive.

[Cristi_Neagu 134]

1 minute ago, Gilandred said:

One of the top voted threads on the msfs official forums was to work directly with the FBW team on their A320, and by most accounts this has resulted in a fruitful partnership.  Perhaps this is the way to approach the situation if your attempts to contact them directly have failed.  If you can get enough community support then at the very least it should be addressed on a monthly Q&A.

Been there, done that, got the silly t-shirt... https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/reality-xp/392140