42 minutes ago, Matchstick said:

I'm more than willing to believe that XP and MSFS could co-exist as separate sim ecosystems going forward with their own strengths and weaknesses, so I'm curious if the economics suggest if that happening or not.

For the home flight simulator market, I consider X-Plane, P3D, and MSFS to be homogenous products for the consumer home PC market. If you don't know what a homogenous product is, you can check that link that explains what it is (you will encounter this term in economics or business courses).

In a nutshell, X-Plane, P3D, and MSFS can be substituted for each other if they have the same features, so that's why they have characteristics of a homogenous product.  However, at the moment, they do not all have the same features, especially when it comes to high fidelity airliners.  MSFS does not have as many high fidelity airliners as both X-Plane and P3D.  However, the issues is when high fidelity Airbus and Boeing airliners come out for MSFS.  It appears to be starting with the Fenix A320 and PMDG 737, and more high fidelity airliners will follow on MSFS.

One thing  you have to understand about homogenous products is that there is not necessarily a clear winner if the technology of competing products are comparable, and the price is also comparable.  So if all the competing products have comparable technology, and the price is also comparable, they can co-exist together.  However, if one product has a clear technological lead against the other competing products, and the price is comparable to the competing products, consumers will flock to that leading product and leave the other competing products (because of course, the products are homogenous products).

MSFS has a clear technological lead against X-Plane and P3D in the areas of graphics and live streaming of satellite/photogrammetry for the entire world (heck, Microsoft doesn't even charge for satellite/photogrammetry streaming after you purchase your copy of MSFS).  To make it even worse for its competitors, the price of MSFS is comparable to its competitors, at $60 USD, despite the fact that MSFS has a clear technological lead in the areas I just mentioned.  The last major advantage of P3D and X-Plane are the high fidelity airliners but this is being eroded away by the upcoming high fidelity airliners being released for MSFS (it also doesn't help that for P3D and X-Plane, that you have to spend extra money on ortho scenery and extra money on a hard drive to store GBs worth of ortho, driving up the price to run P3D and X-Plane with decent looking scenery, which ultimately increases the cost for consumers of those products).

Edited July 13, 20214 yr by abrams_tank

Sounds like this will be the new Crysis for flight games. The LOD they have said it has...

Quote

....if you get up close and personal with one of the screens on the Fenix Sim A320, you will start seeing individual pixels instead of a single blurry texture. 

..sounds like many GPUs will cry 😃

 

6 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

For the home flight simulator market, I consider X-Plane, P3D, and MSFS to be homogenous products for the consumer home PC market. If you don't know what a homogenous product is, you can check that link that explains what it is (you will encounter this term in economics or business courses).

In a nutshell, X-Plane, P3D, and MSFS can be substituted for each other if they have the same features.  At the moment, they do not all have the same features, especially when it comes to high fidelity airliners.  MSFS does not have as many high fidelity airliners as both X-Plane and P3D.  However, the issues is when high fidelity Airbus and Boeing airliners come out for MSFS.  It appears to be starting with the Fenix A320 and PMDG 737, and more high fidelity airliners will follow on MSFS.

One thing  you have to understand about homogenous products is that there is not necessarily a clear winner if the technology of competing products are comparable.  So if all the competing products have comparable technology, they can co-exist together.  However, if one product has a clear technological lead against the other competing products, consumers will flock to that leading product and leave the other competing products (because of course, the products are homogenous products).

MSFS has a clear technological lead against X-Plane and P3D in the areas of graphics and live streaming of satellite/photogrammetry (heck, Microsoft doesn't even charge for satellite/photogrammetry streaming after you purchase your copy of MSFS).  The last major advantage of P3D and X-Plane are the high fidelity airliners but this is being eroded away by the upcoming high fidelity airliners being released for MSFS. In my opinion, for the home simulator market, if there is a product with a clear technological advantage, because I consider the home simulator market to be homogenous products, it's not good news for the lagging simulators that are behind in technology, namely P3D and X-Plane.

The homogenous nature mostly applies to newcommers to the sims since other will tend to have investment in a prior sim ecosystem that will potentially provides resistance to moving between sims.

Flight sims have never been a monoculture with one sim to rule them all and I personally don't expect that to happen now, but I do expect that smaller sims will be forced out of the consumer market - FS2 and then P3D seem the most likely losers here. But there are aspects of MSFS, for example the always-on nature, that don't suit some and that will always provide opportunity for alternative products

Is it possible get a feature map of the FBW-, FSLabs- and Fenix-Airbus showing what is unique in each of these?

E.g. is this feature with the satellite count there in FSL? What is in FSL, that is not mentioned or not probable in Fenix? What is in FBW, that is not there in FSL?

A comprehensive feature map would be very helpful to judge the offerings...

45 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

I just popped over at the FS Labs forum.  There are FS Labs customers that are saying they won't even purchase the Concorde for P3D when it comes out: https://forums.flightsimlabs.com/index.php?/topic/30340-did-fslabs-miss-the-msfs-train-with-the-upcoming-fenix-a320/&do=findComment&comment=242728

Not sure how many FS Labs customers think this way. But yeah, that isn't good news for FS Labs.  If enough FS Labs customers think this way, that they only want the Concorde for MSFS and not for P3D (because P3D is quickly becoming an obsolete platform for new products), FS Labs may very well make a net loss on the Concorde when it is released for P3D.  

Am I correct in thinking that MSFS2020 currently does not support supersonic flight?

11 minutes ago, Matchstick said:

The homogenous nature mostly applies to newcommers to the sims since other will tend to have investment in a prior sim ecosystem that will potentially provides resistance to moving between sims.

Flight sims have never been a monoculture with one sim to rule them all and I personally don't expect that to happen now, but I do expect that smaller sims will be forced out of the consumer market - FS2 and then P3D seem the most likely losers here. But there are aspects of MSFS, for example the always-on nature, that don't suit some and that will always provide opportunity for alternative products

So I agree with you if the technological difference between the competing products is not significant.

However, I generally disagree with you because the technological gap between MSFS and P3D/X-Plane is quite significant, especially in the areas of graphics and the live streaming of satellite/photogrammetry data for the entire world, and the price is also comparable too. As for the always "on" nature, this is becoming an increasingly internet connected world.  The few holdouts who don't want to connect to the internet to play games or use their flight simulator, are very few.

There will always be holdouts and extreme loyal users of a specific product.  However, those hard core holdouts and extreme loyal users may not be enough to sustain an entire market for that product. For example, multiple 3rd party developers have stopped making new products for P3D because their new products for P3D just don't sell anymore (Aerosoft, JustFlight, FSCrew, and now maybe even Milviz, etc). The hard core and loyal users of P3D were not enough in numbers to change the sales for the 3rd party developers that are abandoning P3D.  There were also very extremely loyal Blackberry users after the IPhone was released, but over the years, those loyal Blackberry users could not save Blackberry either.

Edited July 13, 20214 yr by abrams_tank

Take a chill pill people, stop analysing it to death, buy it if you want, don't if you don't, fly xplane if you want or msfs or whatever it is you fancy. Be thankful that we have these amazing choices now. Rejoice! It's a great time to be a flight simmer or gamer or both. 

11 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

So I agree with you if the technological difference between the competing products is not significant.

However, I generally disagree with you because the technological gap between MSFS and P3D/X-Plane is quite significant, especially in the areas of graphics and the live streaming of satellite/photogrammetry data for the entire world. As for the always "on" nature, this is becoming an increasingly internet connected world.  The few holdouts who don't want to connect to the internet to play games or use their flight simulator, are very few.

There will always be holdouts and extreme loyal users of a specific product.  However, those hard core holdouts and extreme loyal users may not be enough to sustain an entire market for that product. For example, multiple 3rd party developers have stopped making new products for P3D because their new products for P3D just don't sell anymore (Aerosoft, JustFlight, FSCrew, and now maybe even Milviz, etc). The hard core and loyal users of P3D were not enough in numbers to change the sales for the 3rd party developers that are abandoning P3D.  There were also very extremely loyal Blackberry users after the IPhone was released, but over the years, those loyal Blackberry users could not save Blackberry either.

P3D is always a weird one because it's literally NOT a consumer sim but rather a commerical purely. To that extent any unofficial sales it achieved in consumer market seemed of little consequence to LM itself, with (presumably) the vast bulk of the money coming from corporate and academic licenses which will be unaffected by the arrival of MSFS.

Consequently LM seems unlikely to take any steps to respond to MSFS and instead very happily carry on with the markets MSFS can't touch.

XP I think is in a different position, certainly no-one seems to be pointing to devs leaving the platform yet and they seem to be the best indicator of how the consumer market is shifting.

Edited July 13, 20214 yr by Matchstick

27 minutes ago, mrueedi said:

Is it possible get a feature map of the FBW-, FSLabs- and Fenix-Airbus showing what is unique in each of these?

E.g. is this feature with the satellite count there in FSL? What is in FSL, that is not mentioned or not probable in Fenix? What is in FBW, that is not there in FSL?

A comprehensive feature map would be very helpful to judge the offerings...

Although that would be interesting (and complex), the full feature list for the Fenix product hasn't been disclosed yet, and the FSL isn't available for MSFS and may never be.

Plus, this feature map would take a lot of work to do.  You could start it if you want - feel free!  😀

It might be easier to just look at the main unique selling points.  Although the GPS satellite thing is interesting and unique, it wouldn't really be a selling point for me.

PS.  It might just be easier to say, if the current information is true, the Felix has potentially the longest feature list even at the moment.  
It certainly looks very good, it just needs to fly good enough now, and that is subjective.  I would be happy with a 99% accurate flight / systems model - some wouldn't! 

Edited July 13, 20214 yr by bobcat999

17 minutes ago, mwilk said:

Am I correct in thinking that MSFS2020 currently does not support supersonic flight?

Nope.  There are freeware AC capable of Mach 2.4, supersonic flight above 60,000 feet, it's capable now and I fail to see how they would release the Top Gun Add-on without Supersonic flight... 

1 minute ago, Matchstick said:

XP I think is in a different position, certainly no-one seems to be pointing to devs leaving the platform yet and they seem to be the best indicator of how the consumer market is shifting.

Yup, it does appear at the moment that X-Plane is holding on to its 3rd party developers.  I guess we will have to see how it plays out.

I always like to refer to the case of Blackberry vs IPhone because I think it's a good model for what can happen.  For Blackberry, its market didn't collapse overnight either, or even one year after IPhone was released.  But because Blackberry could not match the IPhone over the years (and subsequently, Android phones), the Blackberry phone ultimately succumbed. 

So I guess, let's see how it plays out.  

46 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

I just popped over at the FS Labs forum.  There are FS Labs customers that are saying they won't even purchase the Concorde for P3D when it comes out: https://forums.flightsimlabs.com/index.php?/topic/30340-did-fslabs-miss-the-msfs-train-with-the-upcoming-fenix-a320/&do=findComment&comment=242728

Not sure how many FS Labs customers think this way. But yeah, that isn't good news for FS Labs.  If enough FS Labs customers think this way, that they only want the Concorde for MSFS and not for P3D (because P3D is quickly becoming an obsolete platform for new products), FS Labs may very well make a net loss on the Concorde when it is released for P3D.  

LOL, I feel that topic will get deleted soon 😄. I feel Lefteris is shooting himself with his attitude of ignoring MSFS and treating MSFS like "invisible" platform with no perspective and being always "secretive" about his plans. 

Anyway, I am really really happy to see how MSFS is brining new breed and young of developers into the mix without relaying on the "traditional" developers. 

I would not be surprised if Captain Sim with his keen eye for the finer details, 100% realism, on the ball PR department and outstanding commercial success was secretly behind this new outfit.

39 minutes ago, psolk said:

Nope.  There are freeware AC capable of Mach 2.4, supersonic flight above 60,000 feet, it's capable now and I fail to see how they would release the Top Gun Add-on without Supersonic flight... 

The question is whether the MSFS flight dynamics model incorporates factors unique to supersonic flight--shock drag, compressibility effects etc.  Otherwise you're just slewing a model at supersonic speeds and ignoring what makes supersonic flight different. 

The advertising looks interesting.  But for those of us who've been around awhile, we still remember our experiences with others (particularly others with no previous experience or reputation) like Airsimmer and Blackbox whose advertising also looked interesting followed by an underwhelming underdelivery.

I wish them success, but I am not going to grant them credit for things advertised but undelivered, based on some pretty pictures.  Captain Sim does that every day, and, well, you know...

Captain Sim lost their way. Years ago, their 737-200ADV was a bloody good aircraft - inside and out. I put a lot of hours in my log on that bird when I fancied a change back to steam from the glass of the PMDG NGX.

Their fall from grace has been fairly spectacular; from being a known and largely respected operator to being where they are now.

These new guys have set their own bar high - and it'll be interesting to see if they can keep it there.

Good luck to 'em and I wish them well.

 

Edited July 13, 20214 yr by Will Fly For Cheese