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RobJC

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

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38 minutes ago, Steve Dra said:

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 😉

No Noel!   Go back before it's too late!  It'll be the most disruptive $1 you've ever spent!

Seriously Noel, many came before you from equally deep use of FSX/P3D/XP and find themselves duely engaged.  And bonus, nothing will stop you from firing up P3D as well, some do that as well. Kind of a $1 no-brainer.  Unless, of course, you'd rather not disrupt your own status quo, and I can appreciate that as well.

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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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2 minutes ago, Noel said:

many came before you from equally deep use of FSX/P3D/XP and find themselves duely engaged.

Me being one of them.  You don't paint 100s of planes for 2004, FSX and P3D over 20 years and not be considered a deeply involved simmer of previous versions. 

When I bought my new system, it was just after MSFS released....I didn't even reinstall P3D on it.  Did I miss reinstalling dozens of software titles to make it look 50% as good MSFS does out of the box?  No.  Did I miss my PMDG airliners?  Sure I did.   Do I fill that void in MSFS?...Yes...by flying all over the world (a lot of parts I've been to as a military kid getting to live in the duty stations my Dad when to, then on my own in 11 years in the Navy), revisiting places I've been to.

And just recently getting into painting for MSFS...with my only interest now in painting the outstanding PMDG DC-6.  I never thought it would be my type of flying...never owned it in P3D, even though I could have gotten it for free as I'm on the PMDG beta team.  But once I got into it...its all I fly now, its amazing, and IMO the best payware plane in MSFS thus far.  I have the outstanding freeware FBW A320 for my modern airliner fix for now.

All and all, I could never go back to P3D, and in the near future, my favorite software titles are coming to MSFS, and will blow our socks off I'm pretty sure. 😉  (as well as Leonardo announcing they're jumping into the MSFS waters too)

 

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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

9Slp0L.jpg 

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On 9/17/2021 at 5:40 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? 

Where I live, on Vancouver Island, the answer would be: Yes.

I find it really hard to go back to my P3D V5 scenery.. it just looks tired. 😉

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Bert

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23 hours ago, RobJC said:

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. 

Sorry, but I disagree with your premise... we were using P3D because FSX was discontinued... LM P3D was never a consumer product, but we were able to use their product as beta testers, on the fringe of their intended target market.  As evidenced by the EULA which we largely ignored.. If we all leave P3D, they will hardly notice.

XPlane is aimed at a hard core simmer population that will likely stay with XPlane for the foreseeable future.  I am not sure that LR sees MSFS as direct competition.

MSFS is the successor product to FSX, and as long as MS is willing to invest in this title, the user base will happily stay with it.

Neither LR (XP) or LM (P3D) is likely looking to invest,  to try to win over part of this user base.  😉

Now, for the 3rd party developers, different story.. they have difficult decisions to make, for sure..

Edited by Bert Pieke
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Bert

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On 9/16/2021 at 9:59 AM, birdguy said:

If I can't take my airplane with me I'm not going.

I fully understand that... My favorites in P3D are the Baytower RV7A and the Lionheart Quest Kodiak.

I miss both of those airplanes.. but new airplanes are now in my hangar.. the G36 Turbo Bonanza and the Aviat Husky for example.  Very nice airplanes, both of them... and that does not mention the Savage Cub, which is a better light bush plane than I ever had in P3D..  Things change.. and life is good! 🙂

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Bert

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I think you make a good point Bert,this is going to be more of a 3rd party issue.

I still think that for the forseable future i see msfs as primarily a vfr simulator. This is because at the moment low and slow are the best options that take advantage of the better graphics. 

If you fly mostly airliners then at fl300+ then the scenery becomes less important, you are more likely interested in airport scenery, ai traffic, better weather depiction, atc.

I'm sure at some point that will possibly change, but not until the sim updates are more firmly locked down and the study level aircraft can be done without the potential of breaking after an update.We have no firm dates on that to happen.

I think also somthing that i've not read much about is offline mode where you do not access the servers for scenery. 

From what i can remember, its not a lot better than xplane or p3d with orbx We all assume that MicroSoft will not start charging to access the servers. Now i know most hardcore simmers may pay if they started to charge, but how about the casual simmer?  Which then comes back to 3rd party developers if the number of potential buyers suddenly drops. Do they go back to the other sims.

I like MSFS but as i fly mostly airliners, so at the moment I only use it when i decide to fly the fbw modded A320, the lack of correct ai always sends me back to the other sims though 

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Pete Little

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3 minutes ago, mazelda said:

lack of correct ai

Yeah this is a glaring issue in MSFS right now.  Although I enjoy good AI traffic as much as the next simmer...I was never the few that made it their sub-hobby (I chose painting planes vs tweaking their flight schedules, hehe), but enjoyed the default offerings out there in FSX/P3D.

I've seen the AIG thread where they are trying to move to MSFS, but as we all know...that part of the app is a very fluid topic right now...with it seeming to work in one update, broken, fixed, re-broken in subsequent releases.   This one is gonna take time, but thus far I've been able to still enjoy MSFS without it.  Have to admit that flying into KLAX is not the thrill it was in previous apps with no good AI.

5 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

the G36 Turbo Bonanza

Yeah Bert, Rob created a masterpiece with that one, and its my go-to when I park my Mooney in her hangar spot seemingly after each update  🤬 That too is an item both MSFS/ASOBO and Carenado need to fix. (if she had steam gauges she'd be my main go-to GA bird for sure, but the Mooney cockpit is just so gorgeous). 

 

 

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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

9Slp0L.jpg 

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8 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

Where I live, on Vancouver Island, the answer would be: Yes.

The population of Vancouver Island 846,000; Victoria 401,000.  That's an awful lot of individual house people can recognize as their own in MSFS.  Add Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles just to cover part of the west coast of North America, not to mention the entire globe you're either putting me on or there just happens to be a structure on Vancouver Island that corresponds to your house.

As for so called 'dead' simulators I still have both FS2004 and FSX installed and there are still plenty of payware aircraft and sceneries to go with them.  Just check the AVSIM and Flightsim.com libraries that both have new freeware products added each day.  They are both far from dead.  I spend almost as much time flying and adding new additions to them as I do P3D.  BTW, the other day I gave up on P3Dv5 and went back to P3Dv4 because I could not abide the haze effects v5.  There is no haze in the area I live and when I look west I can see Capitan Peak, 60 miles away, from my house very clearly but it is hidden by haze in P3Dv5.

I still have two separate installations of FS2004; one for California Classics 1960s retro airports and propliners and one for Military AI Works.  Each simulator has it's own charm and adherents for one reason or another.  What's best is up to the individual who still uses one or more of the old ones for one reason or another.  

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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I don't know if it was marketing overkill or just buzz, but I was a bit disappointed to find that, no, I could not find my 5-acre goat farm or even the giant tower AT&T kindly built next door after we bought our property. But Carbondale, Illinois, a couple of miles north, is a just a cow college town (go Salukis!) and MSFS does show the three 16-story student housing buildings and is recognizably my town, so I'll give it that.

I'm not sure many who prefer one or the other would switch at this point, since they tick different boxes. Part of that is perception, since neither product is nearly as bad in comparison to the other as some would have it. If MSFS had a big collection of classic jetliners right now, that might pique my interest, although I have a significant financial investment in P3D I would not be anxious to make a third time. But I look at MSFS and where some see better scenery, I see acres of glass in cockpits. I think that's what most people are interested in. That was the trend even before MSFS. Please don't get out the torches and pitchforks, but look at Captain Sim as an illustration only. They were a niche company that made a 727 and a 707 and an L1011 and their (heavily modded) 732 and L1011 are still my favorite airplanes. If steam gauges were where the money is, I suspect they would have prioritized that. But instead they went with the transitional glass stuff and we'll never see another product from them without glass. I definitely don't want to make this about Captain Sim in general, but my point is I think if enough people were dying for a 727 or 707 they would have prioritized updating those long before now. So, I think I just belong to a niche that is probably not going to get a lot of love from any dev, but at least there's enough in P3D to last me, even if some is technically P3Dv4 stuff, or (to be honest) sometimes a bit of a compromise.

I don't have a PMDG airplane for P3D and don't fly the Maddog or FSLabs airbus I do have, so that's never going to be a reason to switch. I enjoy having a large collection of different airplanes, which makes it hard to stay current on those. Call it The Coolidge Effect of flight simulation.

And I am stuck in my ways. I hesitate to even bring this up since it makes me look stupid, but that's never stopped me before. I found it difficult to set up my controls the way I like them in MSFS. I'm sure it's easy. I'm also pretty sure if I were sufficiently motivated, I would persevere, because I manage to blunder my way to solutions in P3D with a computer background that never extended beyond using MS Word. I guess I'll go back and take another look after this discussion. I paid for it, after all.

 

 

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1 hour ago, birdguy said:

The population of Vancouver Island 846,000; Victoria 401,000.  That's an awful lot of individual house people can recognize as their own in MSFS.  Add Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles just to cover part of the west coast of North America, not to mention the entire globe you're either putting me on or there just happens to be a structure on Vancouver Island that corresponds to your house.

No one is putting you on. I think most people flying MSFS can find their actual house (yes, actual house, not generic building that looks similar), in the sim. How is this possible? Through the wonders of photogrammetry and AI computing. You can generate 3D models of just about anything using multiple digital photos of it, from a toy car sitting on your desk all the way up to skyscrapers. So what has been happening over the years is people are feeding those hundreds and thousands of aerial photos into a AI algorithm that can process and generate 3D models en masse. They can also pull in data from OpenStreeMaps and elsewhere to get exact building foot prints and heights to further refine the models. It isn't always perfect as the quality of data being fed into the process can vary, and can be out of date, but it a few steps beyond what other sims have.

 

Edited to add: This is also why the photogrammetry scenery is streamed from Microsoft's servers, since there would be far too much data to install onto the simmer's computer.

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

Will I see the gas station half way between Roswell and Tatum?

Could not find that gas station...but I did find the Waldrop rest area heading to Tatum from Roswell on State Road 380 (E 2nd street I believe its called locally).  The satellite imagery is not great in this area...and the area needs attention for sure....but this is what you'll see 🙂

Here is the google maps image of the area:

jMCaZ2.jpg

and here it is in MSFS

H7uX6X.jpg

So yes....everything a satellite can capture will potentially be there....depending of course when the area was photographed and other dependencies.   But I could literally fly IFR (I follow roads)...take E 2nd street eastbound from Roswell and find landmarks to point out you may be familiar. 🙂   I've never been to Roswell...unless you count in American Truck Simulator. LOL.

 

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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

9Slp0L.jpg 

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2 hours ago, birdguy said:

What's best is up to the individual who still uses one or more of the old ones for one reason or another.  

I totally agree with you on that!  🙂

And frankly, you have a LOT more control over your sim when using FSX/P3D, than in MSFS where "Microsoft knows best" all the time, and you get your fingers slapped if you attempt to modify or customize the sim in any significant way.

Edited by Bert Pieke
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Bert

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I gotta admit, Steve, that P3d doesn't have that and I'm impressed.  But t still isn't enough to make me to give up my investment in P3D and Orbx scenery to jump on a different merry-go-round.  In fact I don't think anything short of being able to fly again in the real world would.

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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3 hours ago, goates said:

Edited to add: This is also why the photogrammetry scenery is streamed from Microsoft's servers, since there would be far too much data to install onto the simmer's computer.

So, you are saying that I have to be connected to the internet to run MSFS?  And what happens if your ISP goes down for some reason in mid flight?  Can you continue on when it comes back up or do you have to start over again?  Not that it happens very often, depending on where you live, but it does happen to me a couple of times a month...usually when I am trying to respond to e-mails.

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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3 hours ago, Tim_Capps said:

I would persevere, because I manage to blunder my way to solutions in P3D with a computer background that never extended beyond using MS Word

I am still using Word Perfect since I am comfortable with that.  I never learned how to use MS Word.  And mine is several generations old.  I must have deleted the upgrade offers a thousand times over the years.  Same with Corel Photo Draw which I use to enhance my photos.  They both still do what I need them for so why change or upgrade?

Noel


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

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