Future of p3d ?

[coastaldriver 915]

Well, the passion for aviation and the keen interest in flight simulator is more than evident in this thread - well and truly alive and well.! Great collection of views and experiences good to hear them excellent discussion all round! Time will tell I guess where we end up with P3D but I do have so say it is pretty word not allowed impressive at the moment graphically and performance way, perfect not at all but I am doing more actual fun flying than ever before in the sim something I could never do in FSX (crashes, hangs etc etc etc etc) that is all gone and so much of that great work from FSX days works and looks pretty word not allowed good in P3D. 

 

[RXP 2,336]

I don't want to derail the topic toward FS2020 but I feel compelled as a 3rd party vendor to say the following:

@simbol spot on! I'm certain all of the 3rd party vendors will agree with me when I say that all 3rd party vendors do share the same passion as their customers otherwise we wouldn't even be making add-ons, and we also do share the same frustration you can't fly our add-ons with FS2020 (for those not being in any position to offer their add-ons for FS2020 yet).

 

4 hours ago, newtie said:

Looks to me like they are discouraging 3rd party developers.

Sometimes it is even worse than this, let alone baring 3rd party vendor market place applications, or silencing 3rd party vendor accounts on their forums ...

Unfortunately I can't count the number of time I read "3rd party who are not embracing the new are doomed to fail" over the FS2020 forum, but users must realize the main problem is not 3rd party not wanting to, not at all.

 

Back on the future of P3D:

During the FSExpo presentation and Q&A session, it seemed to me they are well aware of the need to raise the bar for the Prepar3D terrain rendering and they even said they are already in talks with different companies including Google. They were also clearly showing, in my opinion, that despite the commercial target of Prepar3D, simmers remain a valuable target and an asset to their product in many different ways.

I'd also like to thank @virtuali for his detailed explanation on how they've been able to bend the simulator to their needs. The mere fact the platform can bend, instead of the 3rd party developer, is a strong testimony of the creativity potential of your favorite 3rd party vendors when the platform (a real one here) is meant to foster creativity, as opposed to sand-boxing add-ons in a ludicrous way.

My understanding is that the future of P3D is bright for us simmers, so is the future of X-Plane, both simulators meant and designed to support and grow an ecosystem of 3rd party vendors via their strong and low level SDK giving access to the richness of their entrails, which is key to unleashing creativity.

Edited November 25, 2021 by RXP

[shivers9 1,174]

Their are few things that a man can count on in life these days. For the world of Flight Simming, I know that... (1) each and every day someone is going to tell me that LM is stupid and P3D will never survive. Number (2)....Each and every month or so when I look at the "front page" of AVSIM I know that I am going to be able to see the dumpster fires in the recent posts section. It has been this way ever since the other sim was announced and the start of the Thursday afternoon gathering of airplane crashers to sacrifice a gallon of simulated AV fuel to the new "Sim God". P3D's future for us is more than likely continued bouts of High blood pressure but with a certain "smile" because many of us have been to this mountain more than one time.

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

6 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@simbol, what an absolute horror show. 😳

Yep...Geezus....Ray, with the 'rest of the story' being told here on this thread...one can certainly see P3D (whatever) in a very 'new' light...even if it stops reincarnation at v5.2!   Geez....

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

6 hours ago, newtie said:

Looks to me like they are discouraging 3rd party developers.

FUBAR

Or at least, probably not by intent, a 'developer hostile environment'.  

[shivers9 1,174]

3 hours ago, kevinfirth said:

It takes 2 to tango, I don’t think they want to dance I’m afraid.  I have noticed there seems to have been an ever so slight difference in communication levels depending on who has been the project lead.  Chris Metel, the current boss, seems to firmly be in the incommunicado camp.

I have a bit different take on this subject of communication. Why on earth would a multi-billion defense contractor spend money for employees that day in and day out have to fight off all the kids, trolls and groupies that want to land 747's on aircraft Carriers and crash into hi-def tall buildings done in living color and RTX. Yes there are some here who do have some good ideas and I am certain that LM has folks to pick up on those posts from this site as well as others. Did I mention that LM is a multi-billion company? You don't get there by chatting on a website. If our only hope is that LM will take us to the dance then I am afraid we are all going to have a lot of lonely Friday nights! 

[Multisim 116]

13 hours ago, F737NG said:

I see it as what's the point of a developer spending time on a platform whose fundamentals change every couple months?

If it's changing because it's stil in early development and/or new features are introduced that has to cause some fundamentals changes, then I'd say deal with it. In the case of Prepar3d however, which can not be considered neither new nor being very actively developed, addons break all the time anyway, even after minor updates. It's just that the 3rd party Prepar3d devleopers have fortunately/unfortunately learned during the years that this is the way it is and are ususally very good at updating their software.

I'm not trying to say that MSFS is a smooth ride for 3rd party developers, not at all, but the acceptance of problems is much higher if you see that the devloper take things seriously and tries to improve. Those will finally catch up. I'd rather see a developer with ambitions and intensions who break things on the way, rather than a developer with no ambitions or intensions at all.

No matter how hard it is and has been for developers to enter the MSFS arena, most of them have now invested a lot of time and effort that they likely don't want to got to waste. To think that they will give up and go back to Prepar3d is a bit naive. Just look at the Prepar3d 3rd party market, it's already very close to dead. There are still some big releases but those are addons that have already been in the making for a long time. I find it very hard to believe that any Prepar3d developers in the year 2021 will make a business decision to start developing a new addon that is going to be released years from now.

Edited November 26, 2021 by Multisim

[Multisim 116]

7 hours ago, pgde said:

At FSEXPO, the LM representative made it clear that it was LM's policy not to disclose timelines or future plans.

When a business who sells you something tells you, the paying customer, that they don't disclose timelines or future plans, it means one of two things (or both):

• There is no timeline or future plan. They have absolutely no idea.
• You mean absolutely nothing to them, you are not their target audience and they could not care less about you.

One could wonder why they even show up at expos year after year just to tell you that there is nothing to show or tell you.

 

[David Mills 4,722]

4 hours ago, shivers9 said:

Why on earth would a multi-billion defense contractor spend money for employees that day in and day out have to fight off all the kids, trolls and groupies that want to land 747's on aircraft Carriers and crash into hi-def tall buildings done in living color and RTX. Yes there are some here who do have some good ideas and I am certain that LM has folks to pick up on those posts from this site as well as others. Did I mention that LM is a multi-billion company?

Microsoft is also a multi-billion company, and they are very communicative and responsive to the MSFS community about updates and bug fixes.

[d.tsakiris 417]

27 minutes ago, Multisim said:

In the case of Prepar3d however, which can not be considered neither new nor being very actively developed

Both statements are not true. Significant parts of the sim are new, which points to active development.

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

I will say for my 2 cents,  I feel that P3D v5.2 to be a very capable rendition of the P3D franchise...I never have a CTD.  I have it loaded to the gill slits with 3rP content, you load it up, and (for me) it runs, until I shut it down.  Great visuals, fantastic water depictions, good clouds by 3rP...and every 3rP plane runs, with nothing causing CTD's in or out of the cockpits.  What's to complain about?  I have nothing that comes to mind. I certainly hope that we see a v6.x and yep, I will buy it, if only out of base curiosity...but more to use and fly.  BUT....but...if L.M.  by inaction, shows us that v5.2 is the end of the rail line...personally, I won't cry the Blues.  Everything I bought works...again, nothing now (even video drivers) causes (DX12) a hang or CTD...so all is good.  P3D v5.2 is as modern a synthetic texture based flight sim, as anything out there....so no Crocodile Tears...it still looks good, runs good, heck IS good to this old Flight Sime Codger...

Ses

[Dominique_K 10,132]

It 1/ You cannot compare the culture of a defense contractor with a few mega-customers characterized by the need of secrecy and the culture of a company targeting the widest audience possible where marketing is part as the products as much as the code. Different DNA.

2/ you cannot assimilate a few msfs groupies who rather sillily relish in forecasting the P3D and Xp demise and the bulk of MSFS simmers who enjoy Asobo’s baby.  They have their counterparts here who relish in repeating stale  clichés about MSFS. 

3/ I will not elaborate on MSFS or its future , this is not the place. I say what I think on the other forum. In a nutshell, Asobo is a bright team and made the sim I was dreaming of when flying FS1 but the project management on the MS side stinks.

The point is that I would be highly surprised  not to see MS which is btw also a defense contractor, not going trample on the P3D pro market. LM obviously knows it and have to prepare for it. They have the assets at their disposal or partners which have them (AWS or Maxar for instance). The question is whether they can they do it without breaking the old mold, the Aces Studio legacy (the code and their intellectual way  of approaching issues). 

In any case, to be blunt, to think that the rather innovative paradigm introduced by Asobo is of no use for the professional (including defense) market is rather stupid and certainly not coming from people who have ever participated to military exercises for instance. And I burst in an unkind laugh when I read that CAE simulators or the like have poor graphics so P3D is not at fault and that  nice graphics are just eye candy. 

[Multisim 116]

1 hour ago, d.tsakiris said:

Both statements are not true. Significant parts of the sim are new, which points to active development.

I guess it depends on how you see it. Many people in the flight sim community seem to use FSX as a reference as to what is being actively developed or not. In that case anything that hasn't been completely dead for five years is considered being in active development.

The way I see it though, Prepar3d as well as its 3rd party market is as close to being abandonware as you can get. I guess the significant parts you're refering to are things like going 64-bit. I think that's just maintenance and catching up for old time's lack of development, it's hardly something exciting compared to what one should expect from a big software developer. It's hardly new either, I've seen zero things to be excited over in Prepar3d for several years now. And there is zero communication from LM, zero roadmap, zero plan, zero response to bug reports, zero bug fixes. Almost half a year since the last tiny hotfix. Even though most bugs originating from FSX haven't even been fixed yet. That's not what I call active development.

I assure you that I don't enjoy this situation, like many others I've spent thousands of hours and dollars. But I also see where the wind is blowing. The discussions on every flight sim forum right now is an exact repetition of the discussions we had when the glory of FSX started to fade away. Even after declared dead, people were totally convinced that its future was bright and that 3rd party developers were going to keep it alive forever. "It's awesome, I enjoy every flight and it looks good and all addons work and it does exactly what I want it to, I'll never need anything else", they said. Some still say that to this day and poeple will still say that about Prepar3d years from now.

That's fine but I'm not going to let my denial get me again. I want to take part of an active community working together, contributing to a software that is constantly improving. I never ever again want to be a part of a community that thinks that the current state of the software is good enough and it therefore doesn't matter if it's no longer maintained.

 

Edited November 26, 2021 by Multisim

[d.tsakiris 417]

27 minutes ago, Multisim said:

I guess the significant parts you're refering to are things like going 64-bit.

There were many more, but I have the impression you don't want to see them. There are also numerous bug fixes with every update. I get that most of us wish for more communication on their part, but that's the way it is. It doesn't mean they are idle, and it really doesn't mean P3D is “abandonware“...

[jcomm 5,876]

It all depends on the use you give to the sim.

Example - you want to simulate airline operations using FSLabs for airbus type, Navigraph for routing OFP ( or PFPX, ... )...

You use your simulator standalone, or through VATSIM / IVAO...

You need consistent real time weather and use Active Sky P3D for that, probably coupled with other products for cloud enhancement...

I believe you get what you need, at super smooth performance provided you have a more or less capable rig, on a stable platform that doesn't get updated / disrupted with frequent updates...

What else could you ask for ?

Edited November 26, 2021 by jcomm