Just flight stopped development for Fokker 28 p3d

[coastaldriver 919]

I am struck by the parralels between flight simulation and the aerospace-aviation industry. 

PC Software and Hardware has come ahead in leaps and bounds the capacity of my new machine is the equivalent of a super computer some decades ago. The progress has been astonishing really so much so that now with P3D we have a seriously high end simulation program complete with up to date graphical processing! Much of the graphical development has been driven by computer gaming and mutl-media both. Manipulated graphics including full length feature films are the norm not quirks any more and they just get better visually and dynamically BUT not the aviation industry! 

If you look back you can see the trajectory - from the mid 1980s; General Aviation or light aircraft development and manufacture hit the wall and most closed shop over the decade. Large aircraft manufacturers consolidated and merged and basically left two standing Boeing and Airbus both producing similar products. A few niche manufacturers continued in the large passenger turboprop market (Bombadier and Embraer). The military side of the house has been not all that different, consolidations, mergers and a huge fleet of yesterday jets etc that were really products of the late 1980s or early 90's design wise. 

So we are left with a lot of historical aeroplanes not a dynamic modern industry producing new designs or innovation - very hard to keep redoing the aircraft of yesteryear for the sim is it not? After all how many DC-3s do you want? but more importantly for a younger generation it is history with no relevance - they never see these aeroplanes, never fly in them and have no idea or care about them either - big pistons what's that? So to be brutally honest there is only so much interest and market for historical aeroplanes and that market is pretty well tapped out!. I can see why taking a gaming approach has a lot of attraction doesn't take much to pull together a millenium falcon for MSFS as opposed to a Super Constellation does it! A true simulator which recreates the nuances and difficulties of cockpit management and mission management is a separate niche and again with limited appeal in a mass market of instant gratification and onscreen visual experiences. 

After a life time in the real industry where I have seen them all and watched the passage of time and aeroplanes from the DC-3 to the 747 and in a similar vein the past time and progress of flight simulation from a 64 MB machine to a 64 GB machine I am happy we have come this far and I really appeciate what I have now it is as good as it is going to get.

Sorry it has been a great ride but its over! The dropping of further development of the F28 (again a long gone aeroplane) is symbolic of the end of that era! 

I personally have every aeroplane I flew or had an interest in flying beautifully represented and highly functional in P3D and it now performs brilliantly (not perfectly) so I enjoy the indulgence and the fun of it - I have to, Covid busted me out of the real industry (and a lot of others as well) for good!

Edited July 7, 2021 by coastaldriver
grammatical emphasis

[omarsmak30 4,068]

On 7/6/2021 at 1:59 PM, neilhewitt said:

And (final point from me here, as this isn't really what the thread is about) if I'm being honest, I think we (the P3D community) are at least partly to blame for this. I well remember the many many people saying 'well, I'm not buying any more add-ons for P3D then, I'm going to wait for MSFS' - the day after MSFS was first announced! Developers heard this, they saw the revenue drop off as people did exactly what they said they would, and they made commercial decisions accordingly. We collectively made this bed, and now we have to lie in it. 

Sorry but I don't agree with that. For me LM should take the blame, I have always got the feeling that LM is somewhat disconnected from the community, the feeling that they don't bother reaching out to new people, even the least thing to have social media platforms where they try to market the platform doesn't exist for them meanwhile LR (XP) and of course MSFS, have that which are powerful tool to reach out for more audiences. And then comes the next thing, something like Steam which really, does a good job to spread the platform to more people just like X-Plane and FSX (and now MSFS) and LM has refused to do that (if not mistaken, I read that in Aerosoft forum, Matjais Kok has tried to convince LM to publish P3D in Steam but they have rejected that). 

 

Edited July 7, 2021 by omarsmak30

[micstatic 4,319]

Well to me this transition time is not the best for passionate flight sim folks.  There are a good amount of highly talented elite developers for flight simulation, but not a ton of them.  Having them working on 3 platforms and having to learn a new one that is totally different has really slowed things down.  I'm currently using P3D as my main sim and a little of MSFS.  My expectation is eventually I'll use MSFS more and more.  But one thing that has surprised me is that I expected to launch MSFS and never launch P3D again.  Or maybe once or twice.  Like when I went from FS9 to P3D.  But that didn't happen at all.  Hopefully these airplanes and airports that are being suspended at least get life in another simulator.  I've finally come to terms with losing the prospect of the addon I was most excited for.  FlyTampa ATL.  

[CaptKornDog 282]

6 hours ago, omarsmak30 said:

I have always got the feeling that LM is somewhat disconnected from the community…

Because we are not Lockheed’s primary customers.

[GSalden 4,656]

At this moment I have P3D set up assailants want it with tons of Addons and it is extremely stable for me.

That being said, like others I also see that almost all Addon developers have abandoned P3D, so new scenery/aircraft will probably come to a complete hold. So there will come a point that you will see the current Addons being and or looking “old”.

P3D has evolved a lot over the years but development is slowly. And as they are more targetted towards the professional flightsim world and they communicate little, we do not know little to nothing about future development.

Myself, I like MSFS, better looking ground scenery and AG buildings/trees than P3D. But at this moment less options and features for the cockpitbuilder.

If LM wants to keep their share of the professional market, they need to switch to streaming satellite world ground scenery.
All KLM level D flightsims are using Google Earth as their terrain. 

So LM will have to make it possible to use satellite ground scenery too, but it already might exist as a plug-in program from another professional developer.

There was TileProxy for P3D but the streaming was too slow.

There is the possibility for us to use P3D on a simple laptop/pc with our favorite ac and use WidevieW connected to 1 or more MSFS outside view pc’s.

But as it is now : the moment there is good support in MSFS for home cockpit builders and P3D is still as it is, I will completely switch to MSFS.

At this moment I use both as I have more detailed larger airports in P3D and better home cockpit features.

 

[SimeonWilbury 220]

8 hours ago, micstatic said:

There are a good amount of highly talented elite developers for flight simulation, but not a ton of them.  Having them working on 3 platforms and having to learn a new one that is totally different has really slowed things down.

This is a very good point,

I think most of us who aren't developers underestimated the time it would take both for Asobo to put together a SDK that allows for the more complex addons and the time for relevant developers to get their head around it.

Give or take a few years MSFS will have a much more filled-out ecosystem for study-level sim aircraft and that's where I see myself (and others) finally letting go of P3D as their main sim (given how long I've waited for the 64 Bit edition of the FSLabs Concorde though I may maintain a P3D Install purely to maintain a virtual Concorde). The best aircraft usually take years to develop so the main game is patience.

9 hours ago, coastaldriver said:

ery hard to keep redoing the aircraft of yesteryear for the sim is it not? After all how many DC-3s do you want? but more importantly for a younger generation it is history with no relevance - they never see these aeroplanes, never fly in them and have no idea or care about them either - big pistons what's that? So to be brutally honest there is only so much interest and market for historical aeroplanes and that market is pretty well tapped out!

I agree, it's not something that really suprises me as someone who was only just under 2 years old when Concorde made it's last flight.

It does however make it all the more special when a good quality simulation of one of these aircraft does come about, it's one of the reason why I have a soft spot for Just Flight as developers as they do have a history of catering to classics more than other developers (particularly classic British aircraft which for obvious reasons aren't given much love by other payware developers beyond Concorde & and 146/RJ). So I do really understand the frustration among those who were waiting for this aircraft despite not being a big regional-jet fan, as these aircraft don't come around very often (sometimes only ever once or twice!).

At least with the DC3 and a lot of the old warbirds there are a lot of Operational examples still around whereas operational 747 classics for example number in the single-figures (and most by the US Govt so off-bounds for many of us!)

Edited July 8, 2021 by SimeonWilbury

[neilhewitt 493]

10 hours ago, omarsmak30 said:

Sorry but I don't agree with that. For me LM should take the blame, I have always got the feeling that LM is somewhat disconnected from the community, the feeling that they don't bother reaching out to new people, even the least thing to have social media platforms where they try to market the platform doesn't exist for them

I agree with you to some extent, but as has been pointed out, we are not LM's real customers. We've always been hanging on the coat-tails of the enterprise training market, which has been good for us as a community as it allowed the FSX platform to continue to exist and grow at a time where X-Plane was the only other option and was not as attractive for ex-FSX people. And it's a symbiotic relationship which LM has gotten plenty out of, too - we test their stuff and they get a ready-made ecosystem inherited from FSX. And let's be honest - if LM had been previewing the hell out of P3Dv5 at the time MSFS was being announced and promoted... who would have said 'well, I'll keep buying P3D add-ons because clearly v5 is an MSFS killer'? No-one, because on a visual level it simply isn't. Don't forget that LM actually did preview v5 before it launched (although only a few days before), which was unheard of for P3D at the time. There was just no way LM could ever compete with the MSFS hype machine. 

My position at the time was 'I'll keep buying P3D add-ons until I switch sims' and if more people had done that, P3D sales would not have dropped off a cliff immediately and maybe things would be different, but the destination would still be the same. And I'm in the lucky position that I don't have to budget what I spend on simming. I know most people are not. So I get it, I really do, but that was the ultimate cause of P3D sales plummeting and leading developers to abandon the platform.

2 hours ago, GSalden said:

But as it is now : the moment there is good support in MSFS for home cockpit builders and P3D is still as it is, I will completely switch to MSFS.

I cannot disagree with @GSalden here, because frankly I would (and likely will) do the same. MSFS will give me a better visual experience than P3D and when all my other requirements are satisfied, that's what will swing it. So I will end up contributing to the monoculture I mentioned. And I will end up crying about it down the line when MS finally kills the product off again and there's no way to continue using it and there's no other viable sim platform available. Let's just hope X-Plane can survive the next decade like it survived up against classic MSFS all those years.  

[G-RFRY 1,711]

Some developers are still working on P3Dv5 Scenery, RF Scenerybuilder are working on LIRP PISA for V5 and at the moment you can get there present airports on sale at SimMarket.

[Benjamin J 751]

From my perspective, I don't really care for the F28 and would have never bought it. However, this does make me concerned for the A300. Justflight is still working on the B4-200 version, but with the F28 news, even if the B4-200 makes it to P3D, I think there is no hope for the -600, which is the one that I actually want. Though, with the pace of development as it is right now, by the time it'd be released I don't even know if I'd still be around for it! The 747 classic is the same, frankly. I was excited for this, but with the last -200s out of service, I'm not sure I will still buy it.

JustFlight is in a difficult position here, and it's partly because of the choices they made for themselves. They focus on these classic jetliners, which is already a niche market, and then development drags on for what seems like forever. I'm all for taking your time to release things in their best possible state, but perhaps this means that they shouldn't strive for the kind of systems fidelity that they are apparently trying to offer. By the time development is done all the remaining examples of the type are at Victorville or the simmers that were interested in flying them have gone... The likes of PMDG are in a better spot here because planes like the 777 are flying around by the hundreds. But with a niche like JustFlight's classics it's a different situation...

[B777ER 2,486]

As most allude to o, P3D development has by and large dried up. Look at Simmarket P3D releases, nothing other than some real low end junk and that's barely being released. For sure there is still some coming like KPBI and T2G KMCO that I'm very much looking forward to. I think MKStudios has a couple releases as well. But to be sure, not much. 

For me, I think the inevitable switch will come one day. Asobo timeline and recent talks seem to indicate they will finally get the live weather sorted by sim update 7 later this year. PMDG will have their stuff in it by year end and while not announced one can assume FSL is working on it as well. Even they surely must see that their revenue would sky rocket in the MSFS ecosystem while seeing revenue decline from P3D as people abandon the platform.

By summer 2022, P3D may be quite a lonely place.

 

 

[G-RFRY 1,711]

I think we can say LM will continue to develop P3D for them even if Avsim members leave, and MS will continue with MSFS until final build  and for XBOX, that i still think is why Phil Spencer brought it back for Game Pass, he`s number one priority is growing Game Pass as he said in his last interview now 30 million subscribers and growing.   

[Bob Scott 7,720]

OK, since any hint of discussion related to the actual thread topic--Justflight and their F28--has already left the building, I'll go ahead and call this a wrap.