What's Happening with X-Plane.com

[mSparks 2,086]

2 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

True...but that is not all on Austin. Although I was surprised to see him respond "personally" to a heckler in the comment section of his YT teaser vid.

I wouldn't say its on Austin or Laminar at all. Top Quality SME.

I could (and do) lambast bits of the SDK and XP till I'm blue in the face. But that is not the issue. The SDK for XP has its issues, but still better than anything else (why Goran loves it)

Just look back at FSX:

Peak Steam users

FSX April 2020: 5,971

XP11 April 2020: 4,173

Even back in April last year., FSX had a 50% larger user base than XP11.

The only true problem I've seen is the org is run by a group of unprofessional children with illusions of grandeur, that until very recently was easy to mistake for an official LR forum (see topic title). Unsurprisingly that doesn't sell software.

Imagine where XP11 would be now, if the largest flight sim site was actually run by professional people with competence and no alternate agenda other than making X-Plane the best it could be.

Edited July 12, 2021 by mSparks

[jarmstro 2,405]

2 hours ago, mSparks said:

The only true problem I've seen is the org is run by a group of unprofessional children with illusions of grandeur, that until very recently was easy to mistake for an official LR forum (see topic title). Unsurprisingly that doesn't sell software.

 

Who owns the Org? Who benefits from its profits?

[FlyBaby 659]

3 hours ago, mSparks said:

I wouldn't say its on Austin or Laminar at all...

 

Imagine where XP11 would be now, if the largest flight sim site was actually run by professional people with competence and no alternate agenda other than making X-Plane the best it could be.

But we can't blame the ORG for where XP is today...as a sim...that part is on Austin and the direction he chose to take the sim (features / engagement / updates etc).

I just don't think that he had the vision (or maybe even the desire) to bring all of the pieces together (mass market appeal, engagement with users and 3PDevs, store etc.) like MSFS to substantially grow its user base / revenue potential.

LR should have been at the forefront of all things Xplane...

Edited July 12, 2021 by FlyBaby

[mSparks 2,086]

1 hour ago, FlyBaby said:

But we can't blame the ORG for where XP is today..

actually we can.

Because most of the beta testing was wasted on their beta forum where they:

1. Never passed any of the bugs onto Laminar, leading them to remain unreported to Laminar for years

2. Banned people for discussing bugs, leading anyone actually willing to beta test to give up.

3. Insisted bugs weren't bugs and didnt matter (e.g. Janov saying in here that XP11 not having a working windsock isnt an issue that matters)

And thats before getting into just how many people they scared away for all the other reasons. 

It was only recently even Laminar realised this is what had been happening.

LR do share some of the blame, because their issue system internally is also clearly not fit for purpose, but as far as I can tell even LR now really believe there is nothing left that needs fixing in XP11.

Edited July 12, 2021 by mSparks

[Janov 2,383]

🥱

[mSparks 2,086]

2 hours ago, jarmstro said:

Who owns the Org? Who benefits from its profits?

http://flcompanydb.com/person/taureau-nicolas/9b737afe2edf

[jarmstro 2,405]

6 hours ago, mSparks said:

http://flcompanydb.com/person/taureau-nicolas/9b737afe2edf

Fair play to him. Without his site I doubt XP would be nearly as popular as it  is. Hosting all the freeware and forum can't be cheap although my guess is the cost is outweighed by the sales it generates. I wonder if the staff and enforcers are paid or paid in kind?

[Janov 2,383]

1 hour ago, jarmstro said:

I wonder if the staff and enforcers are paid or paid in kind?

I can only speak for myself - as a "Community Leader" I am neither paid, nor do I enjoy any other financial compensation (like a discount on purchases). I also do not sell any X-Plane addon in that store or am affiliated with any addon sold there.

As far as I know the website x-plane.org and associated store are owned and operated by the single person noted above, there is no financial link or other affiliation with Laminar Research.

Anyone could open any website/forum/store like that one today if he/she choses so.

Edited July 12, 2021 by Janov

[mSparks 2,086]

2 hours ago, jarmstro said:

Fair play to him. Without his site I doubt XP would be nearly as popular as it  is. Hosting all the freeware and forum can't be cheap although my guess is the cost is outweighed by the sales it generates. I wonder if the staff and enforcers are paid or paid in kind?

But now its time for LR to step up and replace the org store with an in game market place.

And there is exactly 0% chance of any of that crew supporting that imho.

I'm sure they a fine with undermining the JAR A330 or X-Aviation or PMDG or anyone else not in their clique. But when it steps on their own turf they'll bring out the knives for sure.

Edited July 12, 2021 by mSparks

[FlyBaby 659]

10 hours ago, mSparks said:

actually we can.

Because most of the beta testing was wasted on their beta forum where they:

1. Never passed any of the bugs onto Laminar, leading them to remain unreported to Laminar for years

2. Banned people for discussing bugs, leading anyone actually willing to beta test to give up.

3. Insisted bugs weren't bugs and didnt matter (e.g. Janov saying in here that XP11 not having a working windsock isnt an issue that matters)

And thats before getting into just how many people they scared away for all the other reasons. 

It was only recently even Laminar realised this is what had been happening.

LR do share some of the blame, because their issue system internally is also clearly not fit for purpose, but as far as I can tell even LR now really believe there is nothing left that needs fixing in XP11.

Not so...

Does LR sell XP through the ORG? Does LR have a way to get feedback for its product outside of the ORG? Only recently? How long has LR known about the ORG? Did Austin himself have an account there?

Blaming the ORG for Austin's failure to engage with "his" users to get feedback to improve "his" sim is simply wrong.

Austin knows there is plenty wrong with XP11...there just isn't any incentive to fix it further without attaching a revenue stream to the effort.

[FlyBaby 659]

16 minutes ago, mSparks said:

But now its time for LR to step up and replace the org store with an in game market place.

They should have done this "years" ago...

Again, Austin did not look to grow the sim and left too many things in others hand because all he (and apparently others) thought that mattered was a flight model where the plane soars through the skies with circle of clouds that do not extend to the horizon, and landing at desolate airports.

Luckily, the community stepped up and made the majority of 3D airports in XP. And without them, and the contributors at the ORG...the ORG itself, XP would have died off years ago.

And still, Austin ignored the very users who were "doing" much of the "outside" work to keep XP alive.

 

[jarmstro 2,405]

49 minutes ago, Janov said:

As far as I know the website x-plane.org and associated store are owned and operated by the single person noted above, there is no financial link or other affiliation with Laminar Research.

If so Meyer owes the Org a very great debt.

[mSparks 2,086]

1 hour ago, FlyBaby said:

They should have done this "years" ago...

Not really imho. Coulda Woulda Shoulda.

"years ago" was X-Plane 9

https://www.x-plane.com/product/x-plane-9/

pretty solid sim, nothing really resembling 3PD support

Ben Supnik wrote the xlua SDK - that and 3D cockpits became a staple of Xplane around 2013 in X-Plane 10

https://developer.x-plane.com/2013/03/three-levels-of-lua/

Up till this point XP is really in a tiny niche and everyone who finds it is 1 on 1 with Austin, and the primary focus is really commercial use - starting to push into the consumer market with the Steam store listing in 2014

https://store.steampowered.com/app/292180/XPlane_10_Global__64_Bit/

XP11 was "X-Plane - made usable" really push to fix many of the things that put casual simmers off (insanely complicated and fragile settings) at this time multiple 3PD sites started popping up, PMDG made a plane for it to test the market, X-Aviation/X-Pilot/x-plane.org happens, there were at least 2 other big community sites that are gone now (because it was basically impossible to legitimately sell 3PD products without the vast majority demanding refunds), but they made a huge mistake that cost them years, as all computation scaled sideways with multicore, they ignored any further development on that and concentrated on single core performance, nixxing them both for commercial and consumer use.

Now, in these last few weeks we have 11.55r2

Still very beta quality, borken lighting puts consumers off, bad AMD GPU support results in lots of performance issues being reported - and still a lot to do to get to something consumer ready. Lighting and everything in this blog post as a minimum:

https://developer.x-plane.com/2020/11/stuff-we-are-working-on/

____

In short, they still don't have X-Plane really in a position where they could do it now. But there isn't much left to get there.

 

Edited July 12, 2021 by mSparks

[Janov 2,383]

Well, some things to put into perspective:

1.) The Scenery Gateway was an idea by LR staff and implemented by LR. It is true that the .org is hosting an "inofficial" forum for Gateway contributors (because LR lacks their own forums)...but LR was interested in having more fleshed out airports and came up with the infrastructure to make this possible.  There have been "custom airports" available for download at the .org for eons, but the better default airports initiative was spawned through LR´s feather.

2.) The .org (and other community sites like this one!) have certainly helped the popularity of X-Plane. It is true that Austin is probably not as concerned with how popular X-Plane is over how good he believes it simulates flight (there is a conflict of interests in those two parameters 😉) - but there are several other folks at LR that are. One example is the "dumbing down" of the rendering options GUI. It basically boiled down to the fact that the "average Joe" is too dumb  rendering-options-word not allowed  to set these options sensibly - so some options had to be taken away from him  😉 This was done to improve the "average Joe´s" user experience, out of concern that bad performance would cause frustration/turning away.

3.) There is little interaction/feedback between the .org and LR. Originally both Ben Supnik and Austin Meyer used to post and reply there, but this has not happened in the last decade or so. Recently some other devs and contributors at LR (Julian ,Michael, Philipp, Sidney , me) have started interacting with user, collecting bug reports and even providing some support at the .org - but it is "inofficial" and while we might catch something mentioned there (and forward it up the channels), the official way to provide feedback to LR is still the bug report through their website or the Scenery Gateway.

 

Edited July 12, 2021 by Janov

[mSparks 2,086]

9 minutes ago, Janov said:

ne example is the "dumbing down" of the rendering options GUI.

perfect example of why "org thinking" isn't consistent with a mass market product.

Firstly:

They didn't "dumb it down" at all. everything is still there, only now wrapped in a "if you mess with this dont complain to support when it breaks things" message.

Secondly.

Low/Medium/High graphics settings is generally more than enough for everyone. Absolutely no one wants to have to spend 6 months deciphering complex computer science just to get the thing working - Not even the commercial customers.

I dont think I ever touched the FSX graphics settings more than once for the hundreds of hours I used it before finally getting XP10 and then XP11 up and running.