Where are all our major scenery developers?

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

31 minutes ago, Jeff Nielsen said:

I think this is it?

https://www.facebook.com/Flytampaairports/photos/3928233807205234

https://www.facebook.com/Flytampaairports/photos/3928234063871875

Oh yah I remember that - thanks much 

[himmelhorse 1,276]

3 hours ago, scotchegg said:

I’m particularly puzzled about why Orbx haven’t ported more of their legacy Australia airports. Perhaps they’re waiting for a WU to cover it, but would love their Coff’s Harbour and Cessnock, for old times’ sake.

I wonder 'why" you wonder about Australian payware scenery.  We are facing a "glut" at the moment.  

We have Fly Tampa for Sydney ... Axonos for Perth International and to really top it off we have a payware for YPKG Kalgoorlie. Recently there has been a rush for Caloundra and Southport in Queensland.  

What more could you possibly want? From memory there are very few other airports serving this tiny and insignificant island in the Pacific. I believe Melbourne, Cairns, Townsville, Brisbane, Hobart and Launceston, Adelaide and Darwin have all relocated to somewhere near Hawaii. They are looking for developers to recognise them as part of the United States.

ORBX (an Australian Scenery Developer) in my opinion has shown very little patriotism for Australia and in lieu of that have shown a remarkable alacrity for the accumulation of dollars.  Not too many of those dollars to be found here as the proportion of Australian simmers is fairly low compared to the more populous regions.

That is business I guess and very understandable.  I think Aussie simmers are going to have to be very patient in the long term. It will be very interesting to see where Australia is in the scheme of world updates.

Tony 

[scotchegg 4,159]

1 hour ago, himmelhorse said:

What more could you possibly want?

Well, the 2 I mentioned in my post for starters. And Warnervale. And Herne Bay. And Aeropelican.

Airports that Orbx brought out early in their addon airport days and got me further into the hobby. Just surprised they haven’t done any thing with this part of their back catalogue.
 

[Glenn Fitzpatrick 3,798]

1 hour ago, himmelhorse said:

I wonder 'why" you wonder about Australian payware scenery.  We are facing a "glut" at the moment.  

We have Fly Tampa for Sydney ... Axonos for Perth International and to really top it off we have a payware for YPKG Kalgoorlie. Recently there has been a rush for Caloundra and Southport in Queensland.  

What more could you possibly want? From memory there are very few other airports serving this tiny and insignificant island in the Pacific. I believe Melbourne, Cairns, Townsville, Brisbane, Hobart and Launceston, Adelaide and Darwin have all relocated to somewhere near Hawaii. They are looking for developers to recognise them as part of the United States.

ORBX (an Australian Scenery Developer) in my opinion has shown very little patriotism for Australia and in lieu of that have shown a remarkable alacrity for the accumulation of dollars.  Not too many of those dollars to be found here as the proportion of Australian simmers is fairly low compared to the more populous regions.

That is business I guess and very understandable.  I think Aussie simmers are going to have to be very patient in the long term. It will be very interesting to see where Australia is in the scheme of world updates.

Tony 

There is more than that, in addition to the big profile stuff like YSSY and Sydney and Brisbane scenery a quick look around reveals ...

• AUScene in addition to Southport,  have a freeware YADG Aldinga and payware YPPF Parafield and YAYE Uluru
• Shunt Scenery have the payware YBSU - Sunshine Coast Airport at Maroochydore as well as a payware upgrade to Caloundra.
• Orbx of course have their major Sydney/Brisbane products but also YRED Redcliff freeware.
• NZA Simulations have payware Hobart Airport (YMHB) and Cambridge Airport (YCBG)

In addition, Flightsim.to currently list 177 freeware scenery addons and airports for MSFS, some fairly ordinary some really good. For example this addon that adds the missing Three Sisters rock formation to Katoomba:

https://flightsim.to/file/256/three-sisters-katoomba-nsw-australia

or this one that adds Signage to the Western Freeway in Brisbane:

https://flightsim.to/file/9056/brisbane-western-freeway-signs

 

Edited June 29, 2021 by Glenn Fitzpatrick

[himmelhorse 1,276]

Glen,

I was referring to Payware only of course.

I had forgotten YMHB amd YCBG though and I have to admit also to thinking mainly of the major and bigger regional airports.

I have to say that most of the existing Flightsim.to is excellent and I am happy with those. 

Tony

[FrankSalo 272]

With TNCM I wonder if Fly Tampa is waiting for more information such as schematics etc for the real airport? Hurricane Irma did a number on it in 2017 and the pandemic situation really threw progress off. Repair work is still ongoing. (https://www.sxmairport.com/construction.php)

 

 

[IcemanFBW 721]

Honestly surprised that no scenery developer has done LAX or LGA/JFK, from the two most populous US cities. And I would have expected Orbx to have done YMML already, considering that's their home airport and the 2nd biggest in Australia.

[Jeff Nielsen 1,385]

33 minutes ago, IcemanFBW said:

Honestly surprised that no scenery developer has done LAX or LGA/JFK, from the two most populous US cities. And I would have expected Orbx to have done YMML already, considering that's their home airport and the 2nd biggest in Australia.

For high end scenery designers...most of the time it's all about access.  It was for us anyways, back in the day.  It took me almost a year just to photo MCI.  You'd be surprised.  Also, sometimes devs just want to do an existing airport better than their previous version.  A lot of airports are undergoing a lot of new construction as well.  LAX, SLC, and MCI are prime examples of that.  By the time you got the pics and started modeling, you're out dated.  And then there's some airports devs just want to do for the hell of it.  You'd be surprised at how little the market acts as a driving force sometimes.  🙂  

Edited June 29, 2021 by Jeff Nielsen

[HPG 403]

9 hours ago, Dillon said:

I've been waiting for KTPA, KMSP, KPHX, and KBOS to name a few and the lag time in bringing their work to FS2020 is all but at a crawl if at all.  

KTPA is my most anticipated airport, happy to see Verticalsim has announced it. 

I agree it feels like a bit of a drought in the payware scenery market lately for the US.

[rayharris108 259]

10 hours ago, scotchegg said:

I’m particularly puzzled about why Orbx haven’t ported more of their legacy Australia airports. Perhaps they’re waiting for a WU to cover it, but would love their Coff’s Harbour and Cessnock, for old times’ sake.

Yes, and in Alaska, PAJN, PAYA, PAVD, in UK - EGPH, and the World free  airports …

[honanhal 1,420]

9 hours ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

 

Potentially because there are posters both here and on the MS main forums that absolute hammer port overs and throw total tantrums if any new product does not use brand new entirely custom textures and all the new MS features 😄

More likely though they are working on full MS products and do not want to undermine the market for those with an early port over.

Honestly, I think it's easy and internally consistent to take the position -- as I do -- that a quick and dirty port-over (not including new work, next-gen custom textures etc.) is fine, provided it's priced accordingly.

I'll happily pay between $5 and $10 dollars for a straight port from P3D of an airport I'm interested in. Discount for previous owners? Even better! I'll get what I pay for. $20-30? Not so much. Why wouldn't I spend that same money on an airport at the same price that's actually new work and takes full advantage of the engine? To say nothing of the fact that solid freeware continues to pop up everyday on flightsim.to. I see free stuff pop up literally daily that's at least at the quality level of a P3D portover from a second-tier developer. Who on earth would pay normal add-on airport prices for the same thing? (Answer: people that see the relatively high price and draw the logical inference they're getting something better than a straight port.)

As usual, it all comes back to pricing! Read your market, figure out what the value is of your product to your customers, and then price accordingly. Not every product has to be -- or should be! -- a labor-of-love, handcrafted bijou. But if it isn't, you'd better not price it as though it is...

James

Edit: Perfect example I just remembered. I saw the other day that FSDG released what appears to be a straight port of their Seychelles scenery they first released for FSX in 2016. It's priced at 30 euros, which is actually more than their FSX/P3D version costs. Sorry, but that's bonkers all around, and a classic example of how not to price your product.

Edited June 29, 2021 by honanhal

[pmb 5,137]

I also I miss a few well-known flagship developers. What became of Jarrad Marshall, Bill Womack, or Russ White? Or, Holger Sandmann who was a main architect of the former Landclass-based ORBX Regions?

They maybe be active somewhere in the background. Or, it's just a result of the ORBX forums turning more and more into pure marketing instruments from the former personal relations-based platform?

Kind regards, Michael

[steve310002 1,198]

So far, with some noteable exceptions (such as FTs Las Vegas), addon airports have been rather underwhelming to say the least and in many cases blatant ports from P3D even though presented as 'built from the ground up'. Many addon developers are starting to sound like real estate agents dressing up their scenery descriptions like they are the best thing since sliced bread whereas in fact they are mostly ports and often lack original features.

So far it has mostly been a case of all fur coat and no knickers.

[Ricardo41 5,935]

22 minutes ago, honanhal said:

Edit: Perfect example I just remembered. I saw the other day that FSDG released what appears to be a straight port of their Seychelles scenery they first released for FSX in 2016. It's priced at 30 euros, which is actually more than their FSX/P3D version costs. Sorry, but that's bonkers all around, and a classic example of how not to price your product.

Leaving aside the fact that there is a very serviceable freeware version available over on flightsim.to https://flightsim.to/file/895/seychelles-airports

...the days of developers just lazily porting stuff over into MSFS are probably mostly over.

Hmmm, let me see, a nice and functional freeware version that is frame-rate friendly vs. a $30 port-over. Let me go into a corner and give this a long, hard think...Ok, I'm done thinking.

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

12 hours ago, scotchegg said:

I’m particularly puzzled about why Orbx haven’t ported more of their legacy Australia airports. Perhaps they’re waiting for a WU to cover it, but would love their Coff’s Harbour and Cessnock, for old times’ sake.

They ported very little of anything from P3D. I don't know why would they wait for WU. They are making new airports for all the regions, even those that didn't get WU yet. There must be some other reason.