1 minute ago, Dominique_K said:

This is not the point. I fly with MFS and like it. After flying the franchise from 1 to FSX (except 95 , 98 and 2000) , P3D2 and 3, Fly! and Fly2,  FU 2 and 3 and that is just for civil aviation. I think I know what a good sim is and  MFS is a good sim as far as I am concerned (YMMV) but  the paeans of praise we read these days along with the constant predictions of P3D and XP demise tend to be a bit over the top.  Actually no. They are totally over the top.

I worked with people that were convinced that BetaMax would be around long after VHS was gone. When people stop buying a product and developing add ons for a product, you can easily predict the future of that product. It's not rocket science. 

14 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

I think I know what a good sim is and  MFS is a good sim as far as I am concerned (YMMV) but  the paeans of praise we read these days along with the constant predictions of P3D and XP demise tend to be a bit over the top.  Actually no. They are totally over the top.

Bravo!

It is normal and perfectly acceptable to adopt a simulator as one´s favourite...much like a soccer team or car brand. To wish for the demise of all other teams or brands is foolish, though.

I like discussing the pro´s and con´s of all simulators - and while XP is my favourite, I will never fail to acknowlege MSFS´ superiority in graphics, DCS´s superiority in modern military aircraft and WarThunder´s in fun and entertaining dogfights!.

All simulators spur the other ones on, I know this very thing happened with XP when MSFS was announced and us X-Plane afficionados are certainly the benefactors of that.

58 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

I worked with people that were convinced that BetaMax would be around long after VHS was gone. When people stop buying a product and developing add ons for a product, you can easily predict the future of that product. It's not rocket science. 

Exactly, and a salutary tale that is too. Thing with Betamax is that it is not that it wasn't as good as VHS (or even V2000 for that matter) - it was actually better as far as image and audio quality was concerned - but it was all the periphery surrounding the format which led to Betamax's demise. Betamax machines were generally better quality and the format itself was of better quality than VHS, but that made them more expensive to build and it made them heavier and often a little larger, which impacted on freight distribution costs and made the machines themselves more expensive to buy in stores when they were sat alongside a VHS machine which appeared to do all the same stuff, for fifty quid less.

Another factor was the length of tapes available owing to a lack of third party support to drive development, whereas you could run a VHS tape at a slower speed, lose a bit of visual quality, but have a recording which was long enough to cover four hour sporting events where people were happy to suffer a bit lower quality for a tape of an event they only wanted to watch once or twice, which tells you that people like convenience and utility as much as they like quality, and especially at a lower price. The VHS format also took the same route which Adobe's PDF format does in terms of licensing for third part hardware manufacture, which the Betamax format did not, in that anyone may create applications that can read and write PDF files without having to pay royalties to Adobe Systems, so there are a ton of PDF reader applications just as there were a ton of VHS machines, which also served to lower the price of them.

So it was utility, price and supporting products which turned VHS into the winner in that race. We can see the same thing with MSFS. It's cheap to try it, it has widespread distribution via a number of routes which make it both easily accessible and widely known, thus it is rapidly gaining the support of third parties who can see what this means to them in terms of potential sales, which in turn means they can afford to sell products for it at a lower price to take advantage of the economy of scale. Moreover, MSFS runs well on a mediocre PC whilst still looking better than anything else, which is not something most other flights sims can lay claim to and perhaps the one place where the VHS parallel falls down, so beyond the low price of the software and add-ons themselves, and even the lack of a need of add-ons owing to the good out of the box looks, it will run on cheap hardware, which again makes it very accessible to people who might otherwise not be able to try out competing flight sims at a pleasing level of visual attractiveness whilst also at a satisfactory frame rate.

All of that works in favour of MSFS and gives it the stability in terms of longevity to allow it to develop in areas where it might initially be lacking. So unless other competing products can address either all or most of these things with a competing solution, then it quite clearly is going to be the winner in the race. This is not to say it is the only race there is, XPlane has pretty much cornered the mobile application arena for a flight sim and P3D has its military clientele. So whilst the race might not yet be over just yet in every respect, it would be a bold person who'd place a bet on another horse when at the moment it appears the MSFS horse is thundering down the home straight with a six-length lead.

Personally, I hope other sims do come back strong, because competition is a good thing and acts as a spur to combat complacency from any brand leader, but right now there is a very clear winner and it is why all the major developers are placing their bets on it.

And you can't really blame them for that, but it's not the visual acuity which has made them that way, nor the relative merits of the SDK or the flight model's capabilities, because all of that can be tweaked by them just as it traditionally has been for other sim platforms by talented developers with clever workarounds and such. No, it's the exposure and potential for sales success which is the bait that snagged them. Ask the average gamer who PMDG are and I bet you there will be many who don't know them at all, but ask them in two months' time and they'll all be able to tell you all about the company and what they make, because there'll be ads for their DC-6 all over the XBox forums and website and the Steam pages. It's the VHS story all over again.

 

Edited June 4, 20215 yr by Chock

13 minutes ago, Janov said:

  MSFS´ superiority in graphics, 

This is very reductive, a cliché of sort. . MFS brings much more than superiority in graphics for a simmer like me (again YMMV) hand flying most of the time light aircraft or warbirds, often taildraggers.  MFS as unfinished as it is, brings me a new and convincing vision of flight and weather modeling. 

I am trying to imagine what it would take for me to give Prepared or XP another shot at this point? I think i would be much more likely to jump into something like DCS instead. MSFS is the winner. The next 5 years will be a constant barrage of amazing aircraft plus more improvements to the base sim. Even if Prepared or XP can sort out their graphics it will be hard for them to gain enough traction to entice 3rd party developers to dedicate the resources. 
 

MSFS won. There is no realistic path for either to compete in the consumer sim space. 

Edited June 4, 20215 yr by RobJC

7 hours ago, Janov said:

The funny thing is - since you guys are talking about me here - that it seems to bother you so much...like somehow deep inside you are not so absolutely certain that your simulator of choice is as perfect as you would like to believe.

Must be.  Nothing screams confidence like spending this much time in the subforum of a product you don't use to white knight for your sim of choice.

Quote

...the smarter percentage of those soon realizes that for the real aviation experience they need something more sophisticated.

I am making this an unattributed quote because it's not about the individual.   However, thoughtful forum readers should recognize that when a person playing the contrarian role in a thread makes an off-hand comment like that, any protestations they make about having good intent should be disregarded.   The subtext in their comments has been made text, and benefit of the doubt is no longer necessary or warranted.

If we all recognized those cases quickly, and in the case of repeat offenders used the magical ignore list feature in our forum software rather than continuing to argue with someone who does not seem to want to engage in good faith, these threads would have a much higher SNR.

Edited June 4, 20215 yr by kaosfere

2 hours ago, Janov said:

I don´t think I need to try MSFS to see its advantages, I see them very clearly and there are millions of youtube videos and screenshots that leave no doubt. There is, however, also enough credible testimony about its shortcomings that convince me that certain features important to me are not achieved (yet), so there really is no need for me to try it (yet).

In general I will try (especially going forward!) to not spoil anyone´s enjoyment of MSFS - unless this enjoyment involves ridicule, false statement or slander of X-Plane.

I will also engage in conversations (in this forum and elsewhere) where I feel I can contribute with real aviation knowlege, but that is not in any way related to a specific simulator software.

Cheers, Jan

 

Slamming MSFS without even trying it? Seriously? You remind me of another troller who patrols the forums looking for negative stuff -- always negative, never anything remotely constructive -- to slam a product he has never tried. Or are you in fact the same person operating under a different name?

4 minutes ago, kaosfere said:

I am making this an unattributed quote because it's not about the individual.   However, thoughtful forum readers should recognize that when a person playing the contrarian role in a thread makes an off-hand comment like that, any protestations they make about having good intent should be disregarded.   The subtext in their comments has been made text, and benefit of the doubt is no longer necessary or warranted.

If we all recognized those cases quickly, and in the case of repeat offenders used the magical ignore list feature in our forum software rather than continuing to argue with someone who does not seem to want to engage in good faith, these threads would have a much higher SNR.

I was writing something longer, but this succinctly makes the same point.

1 minute ago, cobalt said:

Slamming MSFS without even trying it? Seriously?

I am also slamming drug abuse and check fraud without ever having tried them! And jumping off bridges!🤣

Edited June 4, 20215 yr by Janov

Wow. Case closed.

4 minutes ago, cobalt said:

Wow. Case closed.

Excellent!

PS: I never "slammed" MSFS - another case of putting words in my mouth and/or reading what one wants to read with a hostile mindset.

29 minutes ago, Scottoest said:

Must be.  Nothing screams confidence like spending this much time in the subforum of a product you don't use to white knight for your sim of choice.

Exactly. He doesn't have msfs and never tried it but he's here telling us how it is Lmao. He's a mod over at the org, don't understand why he spends so much time here lol

Just now, devgrp said:

Exactly. He doesn't have msfs and never tried it but he's here telling us how it is Lmao. He's a mod over at the org, don't understand why he spends so much time here lol

Because I love talking to you guys! 🙂

 

8 minutes ago, cobalt said:

Wow. Case closed.

Yeah... on my ignore now. Makes no sense. Always the same.