1 hour ago, rka said:

I think it is safe to assume that 3rd party devs for other platforms are getting more and more nervous and tend to lose it from time to time. Their business plans are likely not working out anymore. I mean they probably planned some sort of sales figures for the coming years for the planes they have out now and they're seeing those figures fall apart now. There are developers that I feel sorry for (Rotate, their MD11 would have been an instabuy if MSFS had not appeared), others (posting in this thread, but I will not ping any of them 😉) I don't feel sorry about. They've had their share of my money, they're not getting any more.

 

To be honest, the companies that have it the hardest are those whose platforms are under direct competition by MSFS.  In this case, it's the division of Lockheed Martin that develops P3D and the division of Laminar Research that developed X-Plane.  The only choice that they have is to wave the white flag and stop dumping more money into developing their sims, or spend a lot of money to catch up to MSFS.

3rd party devs have the option to jump ship and join the platform that is taking the market share.  Unlike Lockheed Martin or Laminar Research, 3rd party devs have a way out.  But maybe some 3rd party devs have dumped alot of their resources into developing for the lagging platform (ie. P3D or X-Plane).

To be fair, MSFS was announced in like June 9 of 2019.  And there was some feature video and screenshots to give 3rd party devs back in June 9 of 2019 an inkling of what the final product would be like.  3rd party devs had more than a whole year to plans for this.  Compare this to say, the case of IPhone and Blackberry. 3rd party devs making apps for Blackberry had very little time to plan when the IPhone was announced.

The smart 3rd party devs, like Aerosoft and PMDG, knew what was coming.  They planned for it the moment MSFS was announced in 2019.  Even PMDG tried to get their team to Asobo's office before the pandemic hit but because of the pandemic, they were not able to relocate a team to Asobo's office.  

Anyways, this is kind of derailing the thread so I'll try to get back on topic.

Edited June 10, 20214 yr by abrams_tank

20 minutes ago, devgrp said:

You'd think those same devs would go develop for the other platform and make more money. smh

Guess that depends how invested they are currently (in terms of "we are so deep in the project right now, we can't just throw it all away") and how they see their chances in getting up to speed in a completely new platform. And if they switched right now, they would still be late on the new platform.

Don't forget Carenado, they have joined MSFS and apparently doing very well.

26 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

 market share. 

Xplane has more than, Read: more than *2x*  users than MSFS's 2M, and that's only for android and linux users. That was data I confirmed (so can we all..) following another comment on the locked thread in the Xplane forums.

So Xplane has a single code base that results in *at least* 3x more users than MSFS. 

Future speculations speaking, this platform is not going anywhere soon.

3 hours ago, MattNischan said:

Right now it uses a basic average airfoil for the base lift/drag contribution.

Thanks again!

The average airfoil you refer to - is that the geometry you define for the wing in the flightmodel.cfg, or is it a specific lift formula that is applied on that shape? Or is it an actual airfoil geometry that is used for calculation?

I know I could probably look this up myself in the new documentation somewhere, but I like your explanations and opinion. 😉

 

13 minutes ago, akita said:

Xplane has more than, Read: more than *2x*  users than MSFS's 2M, and that's only for android and linux users. That was data I confirmed (so can we all..) following another comment on the locked thread in the Xplane forums.

So Xplane has a single code base that results in *at least* 3x more users than MSFS. 

Future speculations speaking, this platform is not going anywhere soon.

Hahahahaha.  X-Plane has more users than MSFS.  Okay.  Good one!

BTW, if users of Navigraph start fall in the "hard core" and more serious flight simmers camp, Navigraph did a survey at the end of last year to see which platform its users were using the most.  Surprise surprise, MSFS came out #1 among Navigraph users:

Remember, Navigraph trends more towards the "hard care" flight simmers.  When you factor in the casual simmers, it's not even close between MSFS users and X-Plane.  Somebody posted the Steam users chart and MSFS dwarfs X-Plane in Steam. 

BTW, MSFS is coming out for X-Box.  the number of MSFS users will grow another huge amount when it's released for X-Box.  And those X-Box players will be spending a lot of money on 3rd party products in the MSFS marketplace.  It's a no brainer for a 3rd party developer that wants to make $$$ to prioritize MSFS.

X-Plane, as a platform for the PC home simulator market, is in serious trouble.  Yes, X-Plane may survive by targeting the mobile market, or commercial market.  But for the PC home simulator market, the leader is clearly MSFS and unless X-Plane 12 has "revolutionary improvement" and not "incremental improvement," I don't see the lead of MSFS changing anytime soon.

Edited June 10, 20214 yr by abrams_tank

7 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

Hahahahaha.  X-Plane has more users

Go to your google play store/app store, search for Xplane and watch the installs stats.

5M+ on Android ONLY. Counted since late 2015.

 

1 minute ago, akita said:

Go to your google play store/app store, search for Xplane and watch the installs stats.

5M+ on Android ONLY. Counted since late 2015.

 

Let me repeat the last paragraph I wrote: X-Plane, as a platform for the PC home simulator market, is in serious trouble.  Yes, X-Plane may survive by targeting the mobile market, or commercial market.  But for the PC home simulator market, the leader is clearly MSFS and unless X-Plane 12 has "revolutionary improvement" and not "incremental improvement," I don't see the lead of MSFS changing anytime soon.

6 minutes ago, akita said:

Xplane has more than, Read: more than *2x*  users than MSFS's 2M, and that's only for android and linux users. That was data I confirmed (so can we all..) following another comment on the locked thread in the Xplane forums.

So Xplane has a single code base that results in *at least* 3x more users than MSFS. 

Future speculations speaking, this platform is not going anywhere soon.

I don't know where you draw you numbers but X-plane was underdog for years yielding to many Microsoft Simulator version up until  MS announce quitting  siming market! After then XP shined and attracted a lot of  simmer from P3D and abandoned  FSX. However, right now table has turned once again  we are witnessing another exodus from other platforms to MSFS.

While I can see a lot of users still hesitate to switch due to lack of complex aircraft I predict when A2A, PMDG, Milviz, Magestic and others start pouring more advanced aircraft with high fidelity custom modeled systems there will be nothing to hold back. Also worth noticing that LM heavily invested in mobile developing which was on idle for some years. I think it's they strategy to offset losses under windows platform. 

2 hours ago, WestAir said:

I don't. I have a nephew who has Train Sim World 2 with my railroad and he loves it to death, but it's such a poor simulation I just can't justify giving it a whirl.

Rim 8 is pretty good, but mostly for freight operations. 

 

3 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

Rim 8 is pretty good, but mostly for freight operations. 

Run 8 🙂

8 minutes ago, akita said:

Go to your google play store/app store, search for Xplane and watch the installs stats.

5M+ on Android ONLY. Counted since late 2015.

 

So is XP mobile also better than MSFS or just the desktop variant? I mean the flight model will probably be the same, right?

18 minutes ago, sd_flyer said:

I don't know where you draw you numbers but X-plane was underdog for years yielding to many Microsoft Simulator ...

 

21 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

Let me repeat the last paragraph I wrote: X-Plane, as a platform for the PC home simulator market, is in serious trouble.  

From a software point of view, a single code base that yields in bigger numbers vs time is the actual fact that matters. Xplane mobile is Xplane desktop more or less and both will ultimatly become the same product, i.e. not consuming insnaly long time of branches developement, from a consumer view, they are even merging the multiplayers.

The drawback in mobile devices is we are yet to have gpu's powerfull enough for the really fancy shaders.

So for a future speculation, if Xplane will introduce their already available market place to desktop, and open the mobile too for 3pd, does your point about them (3pds) abandoning Xplane still stand while Xplane might have 4x total users?

Edited June 10, 20214 yr by akita

6 minutes ago, akita said:

 

From a software point of view, a single code base that yields in bigger numbers vs time is the actual fact that matters. Xplane mobile is Xplane desktop more or less and both will ultimatly become the same product, i.e. not consuming insnaly long time of branches developement, from a consumer view, they are even merging the multiplayers.

The drawback in mobile devices is we are yet to have gpu's powerfull enough for the really fancy shaders.

We’re repeating the same discussion again that we had before.  I already said that if Austin prioritizes the mobile,market, he may not invest in development for the PC market, such as DLSS.

Asobo has been asked about DLSS and they said this is something they’ll consider when MSFS supports DirectX 12.  After X-Plane 12, if Austin doesn’t want to spend more money fighting MSFS in the PC market, he may simply prioritize development for the mobile market.  This means Austin may forgo features like DLSS and other features targeted for the PC market.

Mobile users would be very casual flight simmers.  The type of features that would be prioritized for casual users on mobile probably won’t benefit the hard core PC simmers much.

Edited June 10, 20214 yr by abrams_tank

21 minutes ago, akita said:

From a software point of view, a single code base that yields in bigger numbers vs time is the actual fact that matters. 

If you think that a single code base brings a flight simulator to PC and to smartphones, you are kidding yourself.