I guess if someone is trying to buy from the Marketplace, then Microsoft thinks they are a newb.

I never was interested by the Market Place, I buy few things and generally with the dev or at Orbx. But I wanted to have a look at these sales early this morning on my iPad while sipping my coffee . If I am not mistaken, you can’t do that,  contrary to any other distributor, the only way is to open desktop and sim ! 

MS is a strange animal a marketing juggernaut in many aspects but also amateurish. Brute force but unable to understand that people could browse and buy on a mobile and download later.

I knew from many posts that their shop was poorly managed (4 months of backlog to put an inventory on shelves would make you fired anywhere) but this was new to me.

EDIT

So I opened the game and the shop and to my stupefaction, they don't have a regional  (Caribbean, Oceania etc.) or country (India, Japan, etc.) filter :  The world is big and beautiful but they have yet to sort it out. You have to know what you want to buy it ! Impulse buying, nope, browsing all airports around one that you own, nope. 

There was a time when the great Bill was saying that their main competitor was JP Morgan because both were competing for the brightest alumni of the top business schools... Not anymore or so it seems. Who is in charge of the shop, Spencer's niece or Neumann's brother in law ? 

Edited November 25, 20214 yr by Dominique_K

8 hours ago, Steve Dra said:

I still have my brown Flight Assignment ATP book around somewhere (yes...the brown color is significant to those who know) 

Oh yes, ATP! Card carrying member of the brown book club here. Flew it all across the US on the career missions and loved it.

And a few years later AS2 - I was absolutely blown away by that. It kept me away from the FS franchise for a long time... only got back into that with FS 2004.

Edit: Umberto, guess I should say thanks again for your part in AS2!

Edited November 25, 20214 yr by martinboehme

I noticed an oddity buying from Marketplace tonight. My internet max speed is 110 Mbits/S

Downloaded in this order:

1 LFKB by ORBX............105 speed

2 EGCC by MACCO ........26 speed

3 EGGD by PILOT PLUS..29 speed

4 EGNT by ORBX...........104 speed

Even though all were bought from Marketplace and downloaded thru Content Manager, the files from the large publisher downloaded way faster than the files by small publishers. This tells me that Content Manager files are stored on the publisher's servers, and not Microsoft's servers or they would all have come down the same speed.

 

Quote

Struggling selecting KEYW and CYVR between ORBX and FSDT. Any suggestions? 

I bought the FSDT version,  and the terminal buildings look nice.

 

11 hours ago, RogueSix said:

Does anyone here have any experience with the landmark packs from OrbX and their integration with the world updates? Do the OrbX landmark/city packs replace or complement the official world update visual enhancements? I know that some of the OrbX packages have originally been released BEFORE the world updates. Have the OrbX packs subsequently been made obsolete by the world updates? Is there any point to buying them at all? Aside from the airports: Has anyone of you bought an OrbX product that has really substantially improved the visuals of the sim in your opinion? Any recommendations?

Sorry for the load of questions but I'm sure this might be interesting for many people. OrbX was almost mandatory for FSX and P3D... what's the status quo for MSFS 2020?

Originally posted by styckx,  https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/599065-is-orbx-landmarks-parislondon-even-worth-it-now/page/2/

 

Edited November 25, 20214 yr by Waldo Pepper

1 hour ago, Dominique_K said:

I never was interested by the Market Place, I buy few things and generally with the dev or at Orbx. But I wanted to have a look at these sales early this morning on my iPad while sipping my coffee . If I am not mistaken, you can’t do that,  contrary to any other distributor, the only way is to open desktop and sim ! 

MS is a strange animal a marketing juggernaut in many aspects but also amateurish. Brute force but unable to understand that people could browse and buy on a mobile and download later.

I knew from many posts that their shop was poorly managed (4 months of backlog to put an inventory on shelves would make you fired anywhere) but this was new to me.

EDIT

So I opened the game and the shop and to my stupefaction, they don't have a regional  (Caribbean, Oceania etc.) or country (India, Japan, etc.) filter :  The world is big and beautiful but they have yet to sort it out. 

There was a time when the great Bill was saying that their main competitor was JP Morgan because both were competing for the brightest alumni of the top business schools... Not anymore or so it seems. Who is in charge of the shop, Spencer's niece or Neumann's brother in law ? 

The whole MSFS platform has incredible highs and similarly incredible lows. Very puzzling. I could list many but it would be completely OT 

Back on topic, has anybody made a list of items that can only be bought on the marketplace and nowhere else? I can only think of Carenado planes but there must be more.
 

There is one and only one reason I will make my purchases on the Marketplace.  I have lost too much money with fly by night resellers like theFlightsimstore who when they felt like it just shut shop leaving its customers lost.  Microsoft is not likely to be able to do this.

 

6 minutes ago, harrry said:

  I have lost too much money with fly by night resellers like theFlightsimstore who when they felt like it just shut shop leaving its customers lost. 

The downside of this is that in the future you might not be able to avail of discounts from upgraded versions of addons or versions for the next MSFS or for the new X-Plane 12 whenever it releases. 

1 minute ago, steve310002 said:

The downside of this is that in the future you might not be able to avail of discounts from upgraded versions of addons or versions for the next MSFS or for the new X-Plane 12 whenever it releases. 

I am talking about MSFS, orbx has stopped cross product discounts long ago and I cannot think of any p3d developer giving a cross platform discount for x plane. Few of the xplane ones did for x plane 10 to xplane11 either.

 

3 hours ago, martinboehme said:

Oh yes, ATP! Card carrying member of the brown book club here. Flew it all across the US on the career missions and loved it.

And a few years later AS2 - I was absolutely blown away by that. It kept me away from the FS franchise for a long time... only got back into that with FS 2004.

Edit: Umberto, guess I should say thanks again for your part in AS2!

It was quite the airline simulator back in the day.  My most memorable flight was doing a KATL to KLAX flight with the weather set to overcast (read: just a white cover from the horizon down...until you hit the overcast in decent, then all white LOL).   I flew VOR to VOR using actual charts my Delta pilot neighbor gave me....and when I "broke out" of the overcast at about 400 feet, there was 25L at LAX dead ahead....it was glorious!  I actual had him over a few years later when we were all flying 767PIC, and he had just transitioned from the MD-88 to the 767 as an FO.  Even back then he was impressed with the fidelity and all the things I knew about the cockpit that only pilots' would surely know, hehe. 

9 hours ago, raymar said:

but, not very much.  Not like a Black Friday 40% - 60% off. The JF discount is more like nothing to $10 for the MSFS aircraft that was released a few months ago, like the T1 Hawk (no discount)  Turbo Arrow (no discount). F-15 might be the best deal at $28 vs $40 regular.

Ray

About the same percentage discount as the PMDG DC6.

13 hours ago, raymar said:

First, they barely made it to the airport fence with their improvements whereas Orbx has a larger coverage area

That's normal:

our KEYW was made from scratch for MSFS, while the OrbX version is a conversion from the old X-Plane version so, they already modeled something outside the terminal, no reason to throw it out, we assumed it wouldn't make much sense to add something outside the airport in an area blessed with photogrammetry.

But we include the Dry Tortugas island, a detailed Ft. Jefferson, and the Loggerhead lighthouse and a more detailed Naval Air station.

 

Quote

FSDT issued a v2 update some weeks ago and I still have an open item in the forums because it never got installed.

Please clarify what problem are you having because, your post might have gone unnoticed. Please do it on the FSDT forum, not here.

Edited November 25, 20214 yr by virtuali

1 hour ago, virtuali said:

That's normal:

our KEYW was made from scratch for MSFS, while the OrbX version is a conversion from the old X-Plane version so, they already modeled something outside the terminal, no reason to throw it out, we assumed it wouldn't make much sense to add something outside the airport in an area blessed with photogrammetry.

But we include the Dry Tortugas island, a detailed Ft. Jefferson, and the Loggerhead lighthouse and a more detailed Naval Air station.

 

Please clarify what problem are you having because, your post might have gone unnoticed. Please do it on the FSDT forum, not here.

Thanks for the response, virtuali. 

1.  My problem is simple,  I have not been able to get your v1.1 installed properly to replace or enhance the original v1.0 so I don't have Dry Torugas improvements, not the military planes at the NAS, nor the loggerhead lighthouse, nor the Cuban AN-2 on display, plus I still have the patchwork taxiway near the terminal.  I thought the AN-2 was included in the original but, I was not able to find it.  I asked in the FSDT forum for help in locating it but, no one responded.

2.  I posted this only at the FSDT forum under the heading of V1.1 problems. Look on page 2 - there are lots of problem posted there.  I did not ask for assistance here at Avsim.

I plan to uninstall the FSDT KEYW later this week and replace it with the Orbx extended coverage KEYW area version that I picked up in the Black Friday sale. That should solve the failure to upgrade problem with the FSDT KEYW.

Regards,

Ray

1 hour ago, raymar said:

I asked in the FSDT forum for help in locating it but, no one responded.

You have been responded to, 10 days ago:

http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php/topic,24286.msg168849.html#msg168849

It's you that haven't followed up with the few questions I had to understand your problem. But again, please continue this on the FSDT forum, as you should have, your problem would have been already solved, if you did.

Edited November 25, 20214 yr by virtuali

I am sure both KEYW are good and I may buy one day but not before MSFS has decent watermasks in the Keys...