Future of p3d ?

[F737MAX 5,614]

28 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

Is P3D5.2 so relevant that it is the future of P3D, maybe with some marginal improvements for a V6 ? Or does it need more to stay relevant in your computer ? It seems to me that it was the interesting question that the OP was asking. 

I think most people (somewhere) in the previous 13 pages have identified that us 'home market' flight simmers are not the target audience and that fundamental changes to P3D in future versions could very possibly seriously harm the real money-making aspect for LM.

At some point I think the new add-ons for P3D will dry up, MSFS will become as mature as P3D, and it will surpass what I currently enjoy with P3D with all the add-ons I own for it. That will be the time when I consider deleting everything and moving on, just like I did with my move from FS9 to P3D.

However, at this moment in time P3D is superior in that it is a mature platform with a vast array of add-ons that give *me* a much richer experience than I can get from MSFS - your mileage may vary.
Not to mention the fact that everytime I launch MSFS, I wonder whether I will get an issue with start up failing or an add-on causing a CTD when there has been a back-end update to the sim.

The problem is that MSFS (in certain aspects) is the bar to which we now measure all other flight sims, hence the constant comparisons and debate ad-nauseum as to why 'my sim is better than your sim'.

How to make P3D v6 a serious competitor to MSFS for us, the consumer market? Improve the lighting engine, improve the ATC engine, make AI that works / get live traffic data, improve TrueSky to show weather fronts developing and re-show multiple cloud layers, do something about the outsized autogen, eliminate the terrain morphing at close distances, significantly improve the landclass or better still replace it with photo imagery, buy out the RealTurb developer and make it native to the sim. Ultimately, create significant reasons to encourage flight simmers and third party developers who have left P3D or have never previously thought about the sim to make a significant (re-)appearance to the platform...

[Shomron 251]

1 hour ago, kevinfirth said:

Err, 4 including VoxATC....???

Ah that one I did not use since I'm not fond of voice control...

[Dominique_K 10,150]

9 minutes ago, F737NG said:

 

How to make P3D v6 a serious competitor to MSFS for us, the consumer market? Improve the lighting engine, improve the ATC engine, make AI that works / get live traffic data, improve TrueSky to show weather fronts developing and re-show multiple cloud layers, do something about the outsized autogen, eliminate the terrain morphing at close distances, significantly improve the landclass or better still replace it with photo imagery, buy out the RealTurb developer and make it native to the sim. Ultimately, create significant reasons to encourage flight simmers and third party developers who have left P3D or have never previously thought about the sim to make a significant (re-)appearance to the platform...

Good , now at least one post in this thread really comes to how making P3D relevant on the consumers market  in the future ! After 13 pages of avoiding the topic 😄. 

The issue is not P3D vs MSFS, it should be P3D and what messages to send to the LM team. The consumers market is not their priority ? So be it but that doesn't prevent the users to ask for what they want. 

[kevinfirth 1,396]

1 hour ago, Dominique_K said:

Is P3D5.2 so relevant that it is the future of P3D, maybe with some marginal improvements for a V6 ? Or does it need more to stay relevant in your computer ? It seems to me that it was the interesting question that the OP was asking. 

It mostly works just as I need it to, with the caveat that I'd like the visuals to be better.

Volumetric clouds still need some improvement, either a bigger and better implementation of Truesky or something completely different.

Streaming colour corrected PR terrain with vastly.improved autogen buildings would be nice, but I'm not holding out for that in the academic version 😛

I'd also like ground polys to be able to be projected onto something other than flat terrain, and an in sim tool for terrain mesh tweaking, then we could get to grips with sloped runways etc far more easily.

[kevinfirth 1,396]

28 minutes ago, F737NG said:

How to make P3D v6 a serious competitor to MSFS for us, the consumer market? Improve the lighting engine, improve the ATC engine, make AI that works / get live traffic data, improve TrueSky to show weather fronts developing and re-show multiple cloud layers, do something about the outsized autogen, eliminate the terrain morphing at close distances, significantly improve the landclass or better still replace it with photo imagery, buy out the RealTurb developer and make it native to the sim. Ultimately, create significant reasons to encourage flight simmers and third party developers who have left P3D or have never previously thought about the sim to make a significant (re-)appearance to the platform...

Post this on the LM forums...  🙂

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

9 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

Good , now at least one post in this thread really comes to how making P3D relevant on the consumers market  in the future ! After 13 pages of avoiding the topic 😄. 

The issue is not P3D vs MSFS, it should be P3D and what messages to send to the LM team. The consumers market is not their priority ? So be it but that doesn't prevent the users to ask for what they want. 

I don't feel personally that with MSFS out now...and since SU6...and with GOTY coming today....that L.M. will put in any more energy into P3D for the non-military consumer market.  We might get one more Swan Song V5.x, but I will really be surprised personally, if V6.0 comes out, and if it does...that it will really be a P3D-got kicked in the *ss answer to MSFS.   I sure hope I am wrong...but honestly how MSFS is now truly moving forward with each update, and not twenty steps back...I have honest doubts. I mean to buy v6.0 IF it comes out...as well as XP12.  I like choices,  but do I THINK there will be a v6.0?   Not without embedded doubts at this stage. We already know that L.R. is coming out with a  v12. That we all know...who own a current or prior version.

Edited November 18, 2021 by Sesquashtoo

[neilhewitt 494]

If the commercial users of P3D look at MSFS and say 'we want that level of weather depiction' or 'we want that level of terrain fidelity and VFR capability', then LM will work on it. And if they do it's far more likely to be to add the capability to the platform for 3rd parties to actually build the content. Either way they will concentrate on what commercial customers do want. I'm sure the dev team wants to slip stuff in that the 'academic' market wants, but I'd imagine the % of dev time available for features not prioritised by the commercial users is pretty low. 

[Dominique_K 10,150]

22 minutes ago, neilhewitt said:

If the commercial users of P3D look at MSFS and say 'we want that level of weather depiction' or 'we want that level of terrain fidelity and VFR capability', then LM will work on it. And if they do it's far more likely to be to add the capability to the platform for 3rd parties to actually build the content. Either way they will concentrate on what commercial customers do want. I'm sure the dev team wants to slip stuff in that the 'academic' market wants, but I'd imagine the % of dev time available for features not prioritised by the commercial users is pretty low. 

Well reading the hearts and minds of the LM team is one thing (I do not say that you are not right) but what conclusion do you draw for the consumers market of all that 😉? The future V6  will be a V5.3 ? Lets stay put and wait for the heavenly manna ? This community seems strangely resigned to be an afterthought in the mind of the LM commercial strategists .

[kevinfirth 1,396]

4 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

what conclusion do you draw for the consumers market of all that 😉?

1. We will only see incremental improvements, and those that are most important to commercial customers.

2. Add-ons are still required, the base functionality is unlikely ever to be as pretty as the other sim.

3. Without rapid improvement, the market will continue to shrink as the other sim becomes more and more populated by capable 'study level' add-ons from the likes of PMDG and A2A - timeframe uncertain.

[neilhewitt 494]

5 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

Well reading the hearts and minds of the LM team is one thing (I do not say that you are not right) but what conclusion do you draw for the consumers market of all that 😉? The future V6  will be a V5.3 ? Lets stay put and wait for the heavenly manna ? This community seems strangely resigned to be an afterthought in the mind of the LM commercial strategists .

We've always been getting the (very nice) scraps from LM's table, from the start, and we've never been the true target audience. Essentially, we're a nice big beta-test community that LM can draw on. Most commercial customers in the real world are a couple of versions behind (Mindstar still hasn't done a 64-bit version of their G1000 because most of their customers are commercial and they're still running P3D v3.x and they simply don't see the demand). Right from the beginning when people were arguing about licensing (and that is forbidden talk here so I won't go any further down that road) it was clear that P3D was not intended to be a replacement for FSX, it was an extension of Microsoft's commercial ESP product which was based on FSX. That we've been able to use it for our purposes has been a bonus and advantageous for both us and LM.

I'm quite sure LM wants to keep us as an audience. I'm sure they are planning things they think we'll like. But I'm also quite sure that they'll focus on where the money is, because they are not Microsoft and they don't have a casual gamer crowd to attract or keep. And per LM policy, they will not tell us much about what they're planning until it's released - unless you manage to get into the proper beta-test group.

It's always been that way and I don't see it changing any time soon. If we want to speculate over what might be in v6, that's cool - I love those threads - but it will remain speculation until LM says something. 

[Dominique_K 10,150]

7 minutes ago, kevinfirth said:

1. We will only see incremental improvements, and those that are most important to commercial customers.

2. Add-ons are still required, the base functionality is unlikely ever to be as pretty as the other sim.

3. Without rapid improvement, the market will continue to shrink as the other sim becomes more and more populated by capable 'study level' add-ons from the likes of PMDG and A2A - timeframe uncertain.

Prettiness is often wrongly dismissed by the short-sighted  as 'eye candy'. A better name would be  'accuracy', accuracy of the relief and of the ground imagery with its autogen. I doubt that the pro market (flying schools, military) would refuse a better accuracy of the flying environment. 

#3 is a probable outcome indeed considering what we know at the present time (not much !) and that doesn't rejoice me. But LM is a great company and I am sure they know that MS is going to trample on their turf one day or another... 😉.  

[kevinfirth 1,396]

1 hour ago, Dominique_K said:

Prettiness is often wrongly dismissed by the short-sighted  as 'eye candy'. A better name would be  'accuracy', accuracy of the relief and of the ground imagery with its autogen. I doubt that the pro market (flying schools, military) would refuse a better accuracy of the flying environment. 

I'm short sighted (main reason I never entered aviation properly!) but I agree with you and if there is any overlap between our needs it can only benefit everyone all round 🙂

 

 

[shivers9 1,174]

This a very interesting and enjoyable discussion. I do think that when many of us try read the tea leaves about the LM future plans or goals, many of us get too hung up on just seeing P3d as a Flight sim which is understandable since that is our focus here. To say that we will not see much in the way of better ground scenery, autogen and mesh accuracy may turn out to be a bit short sighted. We have to always remember that the P3D environment also is being developed for things like Tank and battle field simulations as well as disaster planning and operations and training for both military and civil applications. All of these type applications would be enhanced by many of the same improvements we would like to see in P3d's future. We also have to keep in the back of our minds that the MS's goals, business plan and advertising program is very different than LM. We have no idea what Developers LM is working with in the background and we won't know until they are ready to tell us. That is just how they roll and their reasons could be many including things like security and being careful not to write checks that they can not cash. It seems to me that they have always been on the side of under promise and trying not to get expectations so high that they can not meet them. 

[Balint Szarka 123]

1 hour ago, neilhewitt said:

We've always been getting the (very nice) scraps from LM's table, from the start, and we've never been the true target audience. Essentially, we're a nice big beta-test community that LM can draw on. Most commercial customers in the real world are a couple of versions behind (Mindstar still hasn't done a 64-bit version of their G1000 because most of their customers are commercial and they're still running P3D v3.x and they simply don't see the demand). Right from the beginning when people were arguing about licensing (and that is forbidden talk here so I won't go any further down that road) it was clear that P3D was not intended to be a replacement for FSX, it was an extension of Microsoft's commercial ESP product which was based on FSX. That we've been able to use it for our purposes has been a bonus and advantageous for both us and LM.

I'm quite sure LM wants to keep us as an audience. I'm sure they are planning things they think we'll like. But I'm also quite sure that they'll focus on where the money is, because they are not Microsoft and they don't have a casual gamer crowd to attract or keep. And per LM policy, they will not tell us much about what they're planning until it's released - unless you manage to get into the proper beta-test group.

It's always been that way and I don't see it changing any time soon. If we want to speculate over what might be in v6, that's cool - I love those threads - but it will remain speculation until LM says something. 

I agree with you. I see LM trying their best, hence the intro video for P3D5 - even if it didn't turn out the best, it's a sign of them trying. I would not give up on them. Everyone is saying that they are just all about their military customers but what I think is if they were only caring about military then they would not advertise Flight Sim Association, Orbx and so many other 3rd parties. Guys don't give up on them. I think they'll surprise us one day.

[Dominique_K 10,150]

 

41 minutes ago, shivers9 said:

All of these type applications would be enhanced by many of the same improvements we would like to see in P3d's future, 

We also have to keep in the back of our minds that the MS's goals, business plan and advertising program is very different than LM. 

We are on the same wave length on the first point including on P3D being a serious tool to plan missions and therefore the need for what I call accuracy and the half-assed common wisdom calls  ‘eye candy’. And I would add that LM as a global corporate entity has already the intellectual assets to shift the gear up. They may do just that in the shadows right now. 

On the second point we dont know anything of the MS long term business goals for their sim. It is useful to remember though that the pro markets are generally more profitable than the consumer markets and that MS is also a defence contractor. Just sayin’

The initial question was about the P3D future for us,  poor simmers 😉. I dont know much about that, no crystal ball, but one thing I know is that   It certainly does not go through bashing other sims  or be resigned to see its customer base shrink and become a chapel because, you know, we are not their main market anyway.

1 hour ago, Balint Szarka said:

I don't give up on them. I think they'll surprise us one day.

Nobody is giving up on them including me who flies exclusively MSFS now. At least yet. I love the  idea of  having a major aerospace defence contractor in the game that could bring some hard competition to MSFS.

Surprise us ? Why not ? But they'd better  move a little quicker ...