Future of p3d ?

[micstatic 4,319]

Somebody said in another forum that FSDreamteam recently stated no more airports for P3D.  I don't have the original source. But I'm assuming this is true.  

[newtie 533]

To us ‘pilots’, flight simulation has attachments on multiple levels including an emotional one.

Developers have only one. How to pay employees or themselves, the rent or the mortgage, buy food, clothes…you get the idea. I respect that.

For me, P3D has enough gas in it to last a long, long time. Tried the other sim and got caught in the ‘I can see my house and the McDonald’s down the road!’ syndrome. Lasted about two weeks.

As mentioned above there’s room for all.

Carry on.

Mark

 

[G-YMML1 582]

22 minutes ago, micstatic said:

Somebody said in another forum that FSDreamteam recently stated no more airports for P3D.  I don't have the original source. But I'm assuming this is true.  

Good riddance. Their quality has decreased dramatically over the recent years. KORD is some sort FSX-mediocre product that I have to use in absence of the alternative (and DD is much worse n my opinion)

 

 FT, FB, WS, MK Group, LatinVFR, T2G, JetStream, Digital Design...all of them easily beat FSDT in terms of sceneries' quality per 2020/2021 standards. GSX is the only product FSDT is famous for in these days

[micstatic 4,319]

I actually like their ORD.  I think it's done nicely.  I was sort of hoping when Pittsburgh was done they would do a dual release for both platforms. 

[G-YMML1 582]

4 minutes ago, micstatic said:

I actually like their ORD.  I think it's done nicely.  I was sort of hoping when Pittsburgh was done they would do a dual release for both platforms. 

I'm using it too, but cannot say that i "like" it. Very generic everything from texturing to objects themselves. If compared with FlightBeam KDEN that was released 4 years prior to KORD, it's like Iphone vs. Nokia 3610. 

....not even mentioning latest NZAA from  FB.

[G-YMML1 582]

If LM would be able to introduce some sort of new terrain/texturing, Bing-like model such as Asobo is using, I would never even look at Asobo. That's the ONLY feature I' missing in P3D. 

[neilhewitt 493]

1 hour ago, G-YMML1 said:

If LM would be able to introduce some sort of new terrain/texturing, Bing-like model such as Asobo is using, I would never even look at Asobo. That's the ONLY feature I' missing in P3D. 

The secret sauce isn't really in the terrain mapping. Ortho and aerial imagery is available as is topographical data for the world. I'm sure LM has data it could use. At least one attempt to use Google Earth data in P3D as-is has been done that I know of so you could get photogrammetry of sorts. It's the AI-generated autogen and airports, the stuff that Blackshark AI does, that is the real secret sauce. LM would need something along those lines and that's expensive.

[Multisim 116]

4 hours ago, newtie said:

Developers have only one. How to pay employees or themselves, the rent or the mortgage, buy food, clothes…you get the idea. I respect that.

Not true at all. There are thousands of people who develop software/sceneries/effects/sounds/whatever for free, because it's their passion and because they want a feature or enhancement that doesn't already exist. Some make a buck or two but the amount of people and companies who do this full time to pay their mortgage is not far from zero. When people talk about flight sim companies they often don't realize that the company is really just a single person doing this on the side as a hobby. They are themselves enthusiasts, they are not some kind of evil developers who just want your money (well, those exist too of course).

Getting the community onboard has always been key to success for any flight sim. Just compare the amount of people creating really good freeware for X-plane (hundreds/thousands) with the amount of people creating really good freeware for Prepar3d (now down to like 2 persons or something?). Do you see LM actively engaging in the flightsim community? Have they ever? The reason for the Prepar3d 3rd party market to already be pretty much dead can only partly be explained by money and commercial developers. Who wants to contribute with a lot of time and effort to produce stuff for a flight sim software where the developer couldn't care less?

It's not about creating a sim where people can see their house, it's about creating a sim attracting the community to work together and taking it forward.

 

Edited November 22, 2021 by Multisim

[Multisim 116]

4 hours ago, G-YMML1 said:

If LM would be able to introduce some sort of new terrain/texturing, Bing-like model such as Asobo is using, I would never even look at Asobo. That's the ONLY feature I' missing in P3D. 

What you call "some sort of new terrain/texturing" and "Bing-like model such as Asobo is using" is really years and years of research and development and extreme computing power in Azure, resulting in something that can be used by the end user. Simple photoreal terrain/texturing has been around almost as long as FS9 and there's a good reason why people generally don't use those silly looking 2d textures. It's not the lack of high resolution imagery or mesh data that prevents other sims from implementing this.

If you think that LM will implement a nice looking 3d world any time soon, I wouldn't hold my breath. Remember that this is a company that still haven't fixed many of the 20 year old FS9/FSX bugs. We still have popping autogen, CTDs, morphing mesh, serious performance issues, jerky road traffic, floating buildings, CPU core 0 abuse, aircraft that jumps on the runway, a 20 year old ATC system... The list goes on.

Of course it isn't all about the visuals. That's really a small part. The point is that some software companies innovate and move forward. Others don't. What makes Prepar3d good is the addons. But many, many skilled addon developers have already left the Prepar3d ship and the rest will likely follow soon. There will always be some people who think that the current state is absolutely perfect and don't really care about any future developments. I mean there are still people who enjoy FS9 and see no reason for upgrading. That's fine but one should realize that when the community gets small enough, the sim developer will give up.

Edited November 22, 2021 by Multisim

[Multisim 116]

On 11/21/2021 at 8:44 AM, Alti said:

Those who operate a professional home cockpit will have to stay with the P3D. LM will do everything to ensure that the P3D is further developed for the professional sector. This is the claim of LM.
The MSFS is and remains a "game" for homecockpit operators, until Asobo allows the data of the sim to be read and influenced from the outside. 
For professionals, the simulation is in the foreground, not the beautiful streamed world of the ground.

Translated with DeepL.com/Translator.

Where can we see this "claim of LM" that you talk about? I've been building and operating "professional" home cockpits for pretty much my entire grown up life. I've never ever seen any kind of statement or even support from LM towards the cockpit building community.

I find your statement "until Asobo allows the data of the sim to be read and influenced from the outside" very strange. First of all, they've litterally been working closely with hundreds of addon developers for the past years to create and enhance the SDK. Is it complete? Of course not, you can't compare the features of a new SDK with one that's been in the making for 30 years. If you compare the rate of development for the most common sims on the market, what's the state of things in a couple of years you think?

Anyway, if you're a cockpit builder, you should know that the SDK of the sim itself is not the primary way of interfacing with the sim. If you're using e.g. the NGX/NGXu, that's the SDK you're using as most things are a/c specific. Or you use e.g. Prosim.

This "MSFS is just a game" argument is getting really old. The professional developers are now joining the party and things will change. MSFS is just the base platform just as FS9/FSX/Prepar3d is. It's just that it's a pretty darn good base that looks good and can also be used as a fun game. Don't let that fool you.

Edited November 22, 2021 by Multisim

[d.tsakiris 418]

58 minutes ago, Multisim said:

We still have popping autogen, CTDs, morphing mesh, serious performance issues, jerky road traffic, floating buildings, CPU core 0 abuse, aircraft that jumps on the runway, a 20 year old ATC system... The list goes on.

These issues are either the result of overtaxing the system, or of incompatible add-ons, or simply not true anymore. Or they apply to MSFS as well.

58 minutes ago, Multisim said:

But many, many skilled addon developers have already left the Prepar3d ship and the rest will likely follow soon

I see a lot of people saying that, but other than the sheer numbers of add-ons being introduced for MSFS - mainly simply because there (of course) weren't any before - I haven't seen hard evidence of this. Like statistics. How many scenery add-ons were released in a given time frame before MSFS launched, and how many are being released now? Remember, even before MSFS, everyone and their brother were moaning about development taking too long, asking for updates, making fun of final release dates, etc. etc. While it may seem like everything has slowed down for P3D, I haven't seen hard numbers supporting this. Someone have any?

Edited November 22, 2021 by d.tsakiris
Grammatical correction

[Sethos 4,335]

4 minutes ago, d.tsakiris said:

I see a lot of people saying that, but other than the sheer numbers of add-ons being introduced for MSFS - mainly simply because there (of course) weren't any before - I haven't seen hard evidence of this. Like statistics. How many scenery add-ons were released in a given time frame before MSFS launched, and how many are being released now? Remember, even before MSFS everyone and their brother were moaning about development taking too long, asking for updates, making fun of final release dates, etc. etc. While it may seem like everything has slowed down for P3D, I haven't seen hard numbers supporting this. Someone have any?

Well, one statistic interesting statistic is the MSFS version of PMDG's DC-6 outsold the combined sales of both the FSX, P3D and X-Plane version in less than 12 hours, and it's not even available on the consoles nor the marketplace yet. That is absolutely huge for a lot of developers and would be a massive incentive to just move over. 

[d.tsakiris 418]

1 minute ago, Sethos said:

Well, one statistic interesting statistic is the MSFS version of PMDG's DC-6 outsold the combined sales of both the FSX, P3D and X-Plane version in less than 12 hours

Sounds impressive (it really does), but it may have more to do with the fact there aren't as many quality aircraft - yet - for MSFS. Everyone is rushing to offer something.

MSFS is out now for a little more than a year, and I don't think the flight sim world has normalized yet. That of course also shows how big of an impact MSFS has had, no doubt about it. But it's still way too early to say P3D is dead because all devs - or even LM - have lost interest.

[Michael Moe 495]

6 hours ago, G-YMML1 said:

I'm using it too, but cannot say that i "like" it. Very generic everything from texturing to objects themselves. If compared with FlightBeam KDEN that was released 4 years prior to KORD, it's like Iphone vs. Nokia 3610. 

....not even mentioning latest NZAA from  FB.

Thats a little hard in my own opinion. I think KORD is much better than KDEN.

NZAA on the other hand.....

Michael Moe 

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

5 hours ago, neilhewitt said:

The secret sauce isn't really in the terrain mapping. Ortho and aerial imagery is available as is topographical data for the world. I'm sure LM has data it could use. At least one attempt to use Google Earth data in P3D as-is has been done that I know of so you could get photogrammetry of sorts. It's the AI-generated autogen and airports, the stuff that Blackshark AI does, that is the real secret sauce. LM would need something along those lines and that's expensive.

But as we all know...L.M. is a 'billion' dollar company...they certainly would have the funds to 'Blackshark A.I.' it...