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RobJC

What would it take for LR and/or LM to win your money back?

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1 hour ago, RobJC said:

I think being able to see real scenery and not approximate scenery is a big plus for many.

Rob, are you telling me if I buy MSFS I am going to see real scenery?  Like my house in Roswell New Mexico?  The visitor center at the Bitter Lakes National Wildlife Refuge?  Albertson's Supermarket at the south end of town and WalMart at the north end of Town?  Will I see the gas station half way between Roswell and Tatum?  How real are you talking about?  Shopping centers at the correct places in cities and towns?  Or just approximations of those?  Close approximations or wild guesses?  How about the abandon missile silo north of town.  Ot the dairy farms south of town.  Define what you call real scenery as opposed to what I see at 2500 feet with Orbx scenery the the San Francisco Bay Area.

Noel

 


The tires are worn.  The shocks are shot.  The steering is wobbly.  But the engine still runs fine.

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Michael, I like to fly familiar areas.  I doubt I have spent an hour flying outside the Pacific and Mountain states of North America including British Columbia in the past year or so.  

Although yesterday I did fly from Nairobi to Mombasa just because I heard something about Nairobi.  Never having been there and not being able to recognize anything would it make any difference to me how close to real it was?

Sometimes we get carried away with puritanism.  Most of my life I was fly fisherman.  I had a friend who was also a fly fisherman.  Now he was a purist.  He would fish with dry flies only even if he wasn't catching fish.  If fish weren't taking dry flies I wouldn't hesitate to but a worm on a hook to catch a fish.

This thread has taken on the characteristics of MSFS dry fly purists and the lowly bait fishermen of P3D by the MSFS missionaries.

Yes, I know this is not what this thread was intended to become, but it has.

Noel

Edited by birdguy

The tires are worn.  The shocks are shot.  The steering is wobbly.  But the engine still runs fine.

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29 minutes ago, birdguy said:

Rob, are you telling me if I buy MSFS I am going to see real scenery?  Like my house in Roswell New Mexico?  The visitor center at the Bitter Lakes National Wildlife Refuge?  Albertson's Supermarket at the south end of town and WalMart at the north end of Town?  Will I see the gas station half way between Roswell and Tatum?  How real are you talking about?

I flew over my house and saw the Japanese maple in my front yard. It's that good.

Cheers!

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Luke Kolin

I make simFDR, the most advanced flight data recorder for FSX, Prepar3D and X-Plane.

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Of course that's good.  Do you  Luke?  And the swing set in your back yard if you have one?  And does MSFS know which days you water your lawn?

Noel

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The tires are worn.  The shocks are shot.  The steering is wobbly.  But the engine still runs fine.

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2 hours ago, birdguy said:

Never having been there and not being able to recognize anything would it make any difference to me how close to real it was?

Noel

As one Noel to another, let me answer that for you, Noel.  In short, absolutely!  It's not so much individual objects, it's the entire package--lighting, ambient occlusion, color, atmosopherics and yes, a lot of ultra high quality objects, many of which are indeed the real thing or close enough, at least most often.  The whole world is not yet to the same standard but a whole lot is.  In the end, as a 30y veteran of heavy flight sim use, I can tell you on no uncertain terms this one has kindled the passion more than the others. I look forward to flying more, have probably flown double what I ever did in FSX/P3D, and it persists now well over a year out.  In fact--no purchased planes and I've only used 3 models and they still are a blast to use.  That never happened for me in FSX/P3D--all default airports and planes were just really poorly done.  

But I have used your argument about why I now have very little need to purchase addon airports--the default ones are often so excellent, and when they vary from their real world counterparts, I don't know them well enough to know better. This tells me that for me, what I was after in FSX/P3D was just much better looking airports, not necessarily more accurate representations of them.  So the accuracy/fidelity to reality in terms of specific objects, is only a fraction of the whole impact--it's the entire package.

So yes, the whole package is just so much more compelling, immersive than FSX/P3D ever could be, and this is a good part of why so many are enamored of it, despite its obvious shortcomings.

Here, can you tell where you are in these two screenshots?  spacer.pngspacer.png

How about here, near me in Arvada, looking south over Standley Lake off 86th:spacer.png

If you ever flew out of KBJC, here's a nice shot of some squalls looking southweast towards Denver:spacer.png

It just feels much more like you're flying from Munich over Fussen, Bavaria than it ever could in the other sims:spacer.png

 

Edited by Noel
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Noel

System:  9900K@5.0gHz@1.23v all cores, MSI MPG Z390M GAMING EDGE AC, Noctua NH-D15S w/ steady supply of 40-60F ambient air intake, Corsair Vengeance 32Gb LPX 3200mHz DDR4, Sabrent NVMe 2Tb x 2, RTX 4090 FE, Corsair RM 850W PSU, Win10 Pro, LG Ultra Curved Gsync Ultimate 3440x1440, TCA Boeing Edition Yoke & TQ, Cessna Trim Wheel, RTSS Framerate Limiter w/ Edge Sync for near zero Frametime Variance achieving ultra-fluid animation at lower frame rates.

Aircraft used in A Pilot's Life V2:  PMDG 738, Aerosoft CRJ700, FBW A320NX, WT 787X

 

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5 hours ago, RobJC said:

Not needing to pay for, install and update scenery, weather and ai traffic are three major bonuses. Those items combined cost hundreds, even thousands.

And if I were a developer, I would be a bit worried about that. I think P3D looks as good as MSFS for flying jetliners (and good enough for me for anything) but only after spending... a whole lot of money. To devs. Is MSFS going to have the same number of users as FSX in its heyday? I don't know. Maybe it already does have the numbers,or ten times more, certainly more than P3D. The real question is how much money are the people going with MSFS willing to spend on it in the long run? There was pent-up demand, so there's obviously going to be a bump. It seems like translating airports is not the most complicated thing in the world. If I were interested in GA, I might take a third look at MSFS. And I know what's out, what's coming eventually, etc. but I've already made that point. When I fly, I'm very busy juggling a classic jetliner through bad weather until I get the reward of landing at a cool airport. (And, yeah, I have great Washington D.C. scenery, too, and Chicago scenery and New York scenery I paid developers for.)

My point here is that P3D is basically the loose change Lockheed Martin finds in its couch in an average week. I don't think they're the story, or they're meeting behind closed doors to figure out how to survive the MSFS onslaught.

I think the developers are the story. And I am not even coming close to faulting anyone. I have run a business. You need to make decisions based on money. Going out on a limb here and assuming LM did NOT just decide to get into the videogame industry and therefore P3D is going to be around alongside MSFS, I'm not sure the "narrative" that P3D is dead and no one is ever going to make any money off it now that MSFS is here is going to be true. If the more established devs abandon P3D, it could remain a niche market that could make a profit for some. This is not like when one version of flight simulator replaced the older one and some decided they liked what they had. This is not like ceasing support for FSX when P3D came along. MSFS is a completely different ball game. I see a bifurcated hobby now. It's tough on everyone at the moment because few devs can satisfy two different platforms (both of which have posed their own frustrations) and need to make a choice.

I think its unfortunate that elements of the hobby get driven into two camps, but that seems to be the way things go these days. I wish there were fewer announcements that P3D was dead, or that MSFS was just an XBOX game or whatever. I mean, come on. Some friendly rivalry isn't bad, but this is part of people's lives.

I laughed when you said it was originally in the MSFS forum. Heh. Internet.

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Hey Tim, yeah I originally posted in the MSFS forum because i really wanted to understand what it would take for MSFS users, many of whom left XP or P3D, to go back to those products. I think there is a business problem that might be solvable, but i guess i just wasn’t seeing the solution. Definitely not trying to start or continue a feud between the user bases. As far as 3rd party devs are concerned, i think the vast majority of potential customers prefer to buy a sim that already includes good weather, ai traffic, decent ATC, scenery, etc. I think many also prefer to use the default planes instead of buying more. Ultimately MS figured out that there is a very large market for a modern flight sim, if you have a solid core feature set. The 3rd party devs that filled in these gaping holes in P3D, FSX and XP are basically left out in the MSFS world. That’s the way the ball bounces. Now scenery developers have a place in MSFS, but it is limited. Why buy scenery that is only marginally better than stock MSFS when you have the entire planet to explore? The big winners in MSFS are aircraft developers, especially those selling in the marketplace. 
 

The people who own P3D or XP and have a lot of add-ons can always keep flying those sims. But if the 3rd party developers have moved on to MSFS what happens when P3D or XP is updated and those add-ons no longer work? Because of that users decide not to break their current add-ons, so they don’t upgrade. It doesn’t take a genius to see how this results in a squeeze on sales for XP and P3D. In the case of LM they simply decide to cut resources and focus on commercial sim customers. So the consumer market basically becomes frozen where we are. And this is really already started, and i would say sales of those two products have dried up. We already know the 3rd party devs have confirmed the same. 

I think XP needs to reinvent itself to survive. Maybe that platform is radically improved, and pivoted towards combat? Maybe a partnership with Eagle Dynamics? But…couldn’t MS go after the same space? 

This is why i asked the question. What would the right strategy be? Because i think making even significant improvements to XP or P3D isn’t going to change the outcome. Those products are going to die unless a strategy is developed to change the game. 

Even if XP had really good graphics tomorrow, that isn’t going to slow down the MSFS train. I personally think the consumer flight sim market is now dominated by MS. That battle is over. The question is, how does LR pivot? In the case of LM they might try to license MSFS for commercial use. They easily walk away from P3D. 

Interesting situation. Smart people are involved. Let’s see what strategy they come up with. I will be mighty impressed if they can grow out of this situation! 

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Noel, of course it's Washington DC.  But I think the Orbx rendering of San Francisco in P3D is a lot better than that rendering is.  Most Lakes in Orbx scenery are as nice as the one you showed.

As for clouds I cannot say.  I only fly with a layer of Cirrus at 39-40K.  I don't like the weather depictions of any simulator I have ever had because I like to fly mountain scenery and so far cumulus clouds at 8,000 or 9,000 feet sit on the ground or on runways in high mountains.

Noel

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The tires are worn.  The shocks are shot.  The steering is wobbly.  But the engine still runs fine.

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1 hour ago, birdguy said:

Noel, of course it's Washington DC.  But I think the Orbx rendering of San Francisco in P3D is a lot better than that rendering is.  Most Lakes in Orbx scenery are as nice as the one you showed.

Noel

I've been flying VFR quite a lot in Northern California in Prepar3d4/5 as well as MSFS. I'm not living there, so there may be detail which escaped me. But my own general impression is MSFS - barebones - is at least as good as ORBX TE Northern California, if not better. As a sidenote, ORBX TE NC has a strange reddish/yellowish tint (look upon the bare hills close to KSFO) which I've never seen in this area in any other sim and which has been criticized in the ORBX forum a lot when it was new. 

What I am missing in MSFS are a few of the excellent ORBX airports like Jarrad's Monterey, but I'm sure they will come, or some of the gifted new devs making their entry in MSFS land  will provide them.

Kind regards, Michael

Edited by pmb
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MSFS, Beta tester of Simdocks, SPAD.neXt, and FS-FlightControl

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Michael, I agree Orbx TE is terrible.  I got TE Northern California and the first thing that threw me was the San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge that looks like was made of Legos.  And the colors are not natural.  If I knew how to post pictures of the standard Orbx Northern California I's post some here.  They used to have something at the bottom of the page where you just dragged pictures but it's not there anymore.

I was very disappointed in Orbx True Earth.  For me the standard Orbx scenery is much more lifelike.

Noel


The tires are worn.  The shocks are shot.  The steering is wobbly.  But the engine still runs fine.

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7 hours ago, birdguy said:

Noel, of course it's Washington DC.  But I think the Orbx rendering of San Francisco in P3D is a lot better than that rendering is.  Most Lakes in Orbx scenery are as nice as the one you showed.

As for clouds I cannot say.  I only fly with a layer of Cirrus at 39-40K.  I don't like the weather depictions of any simulator I have ever had because I like to fly mountain scenery and so far cumulus clouds at 8,000 or 9,000 feet sit on the ground or on runways in high mountains.

Noel

Well to each his own.  For Orbx rendering of SF in P3D I'll have to disagree deeply with that as I have Orbx NCA and for accuracy and quality, I don't see it in the slightest.  But that for me is beside the point because I can't fly into KSFO-HD in the PMDG 737 NGXu w/ any kind of tolerable performance anyway, so I've disabled Orbx NCA for just that reason, plus only fly in the wee hours where scenery is irrelavent.  That is the only way I can tolerate P3D any more!  I will admit one factor on scenery:  sometimes, enhanced P3D is 'prettier' than MSFS is--but that is because the real world counterpart is rather ugly, and MSFS renders reality, ugly plain or beautiful, so much more fidelity than P3D ever has.   Weather needs a lot of improvement but that we are told is coming in a big way sometime next year in MSFS.

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Noel

System:  9900K@5.0gHz@1.23v all cores, MSI MPG Z390M GAMING EDGE AC, Noctua NH-D15S w/ steady supply of 40-60F ambient air intake, Corsair Vengeance 32Gb LPX 3200mHz DDR4, Sabrent NVMe 2Tb x 2, RTX 4090 FE, Corsair RM 850W PSU, Win10 Pro, LG Ultra Curved Gsync Ultimate 3440x1440, TCA Boeing Edition Yoke & TQ, Cessna Trim Wheel, RTSS Framerate Limiter w/ Edge Sync for near zero Frametime Variance achieving ultra-fluid animation at lower frame rates.

Aircraft used in A Pilot's Life V2:  PMDG 738, Aerosoft CRJ700, FBW A320NX, WT 787X

 

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3 hours ago, Noel said:

Well to each his own.

You're right Noel.  While I own all the Orbx scenery for FSX/P3D I have uninstalled most of it because with Return to Misty Moorings I have more than enough flying area for my kind of flying.  Low altitude GA flights mostly in mountainous terrain with occasional forays into the big cities.  With RTMM and Orbx I have everything from San Diego to Barrow Alaska.  That's a pretty big chunk of the world to fly in.

Noel


The tires are worn.  The shocks are shot.  The steering is wobbly.  But the engine still runs fine.

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4 hours ago, birdguy said:

Michael, I agree Orbx TE is terrible.  I got TE Northern California and the first thing that threw me was the San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge that looks like was made of Legos.  And the colors are not natural.  If I knew how to post pictures of the standard Orbx Northern California I's post some here.  They used to have something at the bottom of the page where you just dragged pictures but it's not there anymore.

I was very disappointed in Orbx True Earth.  For me the standard Orbx scenery is much more lifelike.

Noel

Have they corrected the model of that bridge yet, Noel? When I saw the screenshots of it, I could hardly believe what I was seeing. A very poor model indeed.


Christopher Low

UK2000 Beta Tester

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I doubt it Chris.  But I haven't been interested in TE since.  I have to agree that the colors are screwed up and when you get to the edge of it there is no transition to the default scenery like there is with the standard Orbx regions.  Lake Tahoe is a good example.  The California side of the lake is TE but the Nevada side is default with abrupt color change of the water in the middle of the lake.  It looks terrible flying into it from the west.

Noel

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The tires are worn.  The shocks are shot.  The steering is wobbly.  But the engine still runs fine.

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On 9/17/2021 at 7:40 PM, birdguy said:

Rob, are you telling me if I buy MSFS I am going to see real scenery?  Like my house in Roswell New Mexico?  The visitor center at the Bitter Lakes National Wildlife Refuge?  Albertson's Supermarket at the south end of town and WalMart at the north end of Town?  Will I see the gas station half way between Roswell and Tatum?  How real are you talking about?  Shopping centers at the correct places in cities and towns?  Or just approximations of those?  Close approximations or wild guesses?  How about the abandon missile silo north of town.  Ot the dairy farms south of town.  Define what you call real scenery as opposed to what I see at 2500 feet with Orbx scenery the the San Francisco Bay Area.

Noel

 

Hey Noel,

It's been my experience in MSFS so far that most, if not all the the things you ask about your hometown would be in MSFS, depending on when the satellite scan was taken of the area.  Not approximations, not wild guesses...but the actual roads, buildings, etc.

These are just 2 of many examples of actual places I've been to that are faithfully replicated in MSFS....continents apart.

 

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/607044-msfs-freeware-new-york-city-landmarks/?do=findComment&comment=4620854

Locally...I can takeoff from KADS a few miles from my home, follow Keller Springs road, which I driven numerous times, see the Albertson's, Home Depot I shop at, the US post office I drop packages off at, the park across the street from my house, and of course my house.

Oh....and this is also default MSFS scenery....my parents house in Union Park (Orlando) FL....I was last there in 1979...

ION5wb.jpg

Played Little League baseball at these fields down the road....(off the nose, by the round lake called Lake Downey)

9DZ93V.jpg

I'd hope you'd find out yourself by getting a $1 xbox pass and fly it for a buck for 30 days and see if you can find all those places in your hometown, yourself, then make your own decisions on what you think MSFS is, instead of relying on our opinions 😉 

 

 

Edited by Steve Dra
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Regards,
Steve Dra
Get my paints for MSFS planes at flightsim.to here, and iFly 737s here
Download my FSX, P3D paints at Avsim by clicking here

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