MSFS Scenery Prices

[Keto Ketchup 240]

How do you guys buy scenery? I've tried to buy an airport via the in-game Marketplace, but it just stalls out at the "buy" button. I bought the game itself through Steam, but I haven't found a way to use Steam to get FlightSim Credits or whatever they are called. I'd rather not give Microsoft my credit card if possible, but it's not even giving me that as an option right now.

[Kopteeni 819]

26 minutes ago, Keto Ketchup said:

How do you guys buy scenery? I've tried to buy an airport via the in-game Marketplace, but it just stalls out at the "buy" button. I bought the game itself through Steam, but I haven't found a way to use Steam to get FlightSim Credits or whatever they are called. I'd rather not give Microsoft my credit card if possible, but it's not even giving me that as an option right now.

What you're experiencing is a symptom of not having the in-game steam overlay enabled in MSFS. I would recommend checking that you have the overlay enabled:

1. Right click on the game in the steam game list

2. Click 'Properties'

3. You should now be in the 'General' Section

    - The top-most checkmark "Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game" should be ticked

 

Edited July 11, 2022 by Kopteeni

[Keto Ketchup 240]

22 minutes ago, Kopteeni said:

What you're experiencing is a symptom of not having the in-game steam overlay enabled in MSFS.

That was it!!! Thank you so much 💗

To the OP, I just paid $13 for my home airport (the "big" one). On one hand, it feels kinda steep, but on the other hand, it's less than even a fast food meal these days, and I believe I'll get lots of enjoyment out of it since I very frequently fly into or out of this airport. It may have more than enough detail, but considering how much time I spend IRL at this airport, those extra details helped sell it to me. My only concern is how these details will affect performance (still downloading the airport as I type this).

I don't plan on buying any other airports at this time. In fact, I will probably have to make a couple myself as they are not popular enough for anyone else to make (based on experience from FSX back in the day). The airport I did buy actually has a free but less-detailed version. That would be good enough for airports I don't spend lots of time in IRL, since I don't have IRL memories conflicting with what I see in the sim.

[virtuali 4,421]

16 hours ago, PilotPete99 said:

I am, however, a bit surprised by this. In P3D, it seemed to take far longer for airports to be developed. With MSFS, it is either much quicker, or there are just modifications being made to the P3D versions

Making airports for P3D not inherently "slower", but it less convenient, the tools are more obscure, there isn't an integrated editor you could use to see how the scenery looks like in the sim *while your are editing it*, you must use lots of different programs at the same time, some which are part of the SDK, some are not ( ADE, for example ) and the overall lack of integration between all the different programs makes the whole process more convoluted and less user-friendly.

This is not so much of a problem for professional developers, they can get around those issues easily, and in many case have developed their own tools as well so, once you are setup and understood the whole process, the MODELING is not very different from MSFS, especially if we are referring to "proper" P3D scenery, that is made in full PBR, but there aren't that many P3D sceneries made like this.

If a scenery gets ported from P3D to MSFS quickly, it doesn't automatically mean the resulting MSFS product is bad but, instead, the P3D version was good. PBR is PBR and, the same object in MSFS usually looks automatically better than it did in P3D, just because the lighting engine is so much better.

The MSFS integrated editor lowers the barrier of entry for new developers, it's easier to start and obtaining results, and since the surrounding scenery is so much better than P3D, there's no need to add too much stuff around the airport borders and, the worldwide photoreal coverage makes doing smaller airports in the middle of nowhere way more interesting, since even that "nowhere", in fact looks good. That's why you see so much freeware, but also lots of commercial products from new developers you never heard before.

This is all nice and good, and it seemed to result in lower prices, fueled by the Marketplace sales. And in fact, sales on the Marketplace ARE generally higher, but they are not as high as they were in 2020, and that's mainly because of the very well known issues of the Marketplace:

- Sceneries are encrypted and their developers don't have any control *which* files will be encrypted. It's decided depending on the content type but, for example, if we could choose, I wouldn't encrypt the airport data (parking spots, taxiways, etc. ), because it would result in a crippled airport, one that couldn't be read by flight planning utilities, or other utilities that needs to read the airport data. This could be fixed if the SDK added the famous navdata/airport data API, which has been promised a long time ago, but hasn't arrived yet so, as of today, a scenery bought on the Marketplace IS functionally inferior to the same scenery bought from anywhere else.

- Release and updates on the MS Marketplace are slower. More precisely, they are unpredictable. We had to wait several weeks (6 weeks in some cases) to have an update released on the MS Marketplace, while in one case it was released in just 2 days. This is bad especially immediately after release, when any product needs more patches, and they must be released quickly. This lead to some developers deciding to wait to release on the Marketplace, so they could submit a more mature version to Microsoft, one that wouldn't require much maintenance, but this has the side effect that, by the time it appears on the Marketplace, the pirated version might already be everywhere.

- There's no way for developers to test on Xbox. We suggested many different ideas how this could be done without exposing anything of the Xbox security model, and leveraging some features the Xbox system *already has* for testing on RETAIL machines, but none of these suggestions were ever being replied to, other than a generic "we have no plans to allow local testing on Xbox".

Of of the main point of being on the Marketplace, was accessing the Xbox user base, and this was supposed to help lowering prices due to higher sales, but it's not happening right now, because Xbox users have been burned too many times by crashes due to the limited amount of memory on the Xbox, which is mainly due to the inability to test on Xbox.

Everything you buy on Xbox is untested, and it's based on the assurance we got from Asobo that "If something works on PC, it will work on Xbox", which is clearly not the case. The entire WASM subsystem was completely dysfunctional on Xbox, and it took an actual release ( PMDG DC6 ) that ended in user's hands, to realize the retail systems didn't work like the debug systems everybody at Microsoft uses to test. Since Xbox users are FAR less tolerant of bugs and crashes, as of today, the only use for Xbox compatibility is to allow PC users that ALSO have an Xbox to have an alternate way to use what they already bought and, since their main system is the PC, they won't care if the add-on crashes on Xbox. But it doesn't seem to achieve the real goal of reaching an entirely new mass of customers, which was the basic premise many developers bet on in 2020, resulting in initially lower prices.

The main issue with Xbox is, the Xbox "OS" always runs in the background in its own memory space, so the games don't have *all* memory available for themselves to begin with, and to ensure the Xbox *itself* won't crash, the background OS constantly monitor the game which runs, and if it sees it's approaching memory exhaustion, it will axe it, causing the CTD. On PC, Windows tries its best to not be out of memory so, as long you have enough space on the Swap drive, even if you have just 8GB of RAM, it will start swapping, going slower and slower, but it will still run.

But how do you test something as complex as MSFS with so many add-ons ? You can't expect even the MS test team to do that but, even assuming they could, is that even fixable ? Suppose you have add-on A, working perfectly fine with the basic game installed, but on the *borderline* of exhausting memory, because the sim *itself* is already taking quite a bit of it. Then you add add-on B, which would also worked perfectly fine by itself, but it might start to CTD after a while if used together with A. Now, add add-on C, and the sim might not even load the flight, because all 3 consumed the available memory immediately, so the sim got the axe from the underlying OS.

It's extremely hard to make products that will use as little as memory as possible. For start, you must be deadly serious with LODs, and that adds quite a bit of time to development. Yes, it's way better than it ever used to be in FSX and P3D, because there are way better tools in MSFS to check and create LODs but, this means it's not SO easy then to port an existing P3D product, since in P3D LODs were seldom used, because of the primitive tools and ancient methods of tagging them, and on FSX nobody used them, because they use extra RAM and VRAM, which are precious commodity in FSX, and on P3D still not rock solid DX12 support, you want to use as little as possible.

And, just add-on LODs wont's always be helpful in many cases. Asobo suggest using different texture sets for objects seen from a distance, but this only work to a point, because if you have an object close to you using the higher res textures and there's another version of it farther away, BOTH textures will have to be loaded and, since they are different and not MIPs of the original one, they will even take more memory, resulting in the optimization being counterproductive.

All of this requires lots of time, and not many developers use it and, since the MSFS engine can take a lot of beating before the fps really goes down, so most scenery developers just ignore LODs, because "it always runs at 30 fps locked". On PC, with a good video card. On Xbox, which nobody can test on, it will likely crash.

Prices are raising now because:

- Xbox sales are not as strong as they initially were, because the lack of QA on the Xbox compared to the PC version, due to the impossibility to test the product by the one that knows it better, the developers of course.

- The Marketplace limitations that affects PC users as well. Add-ons requiring .EXE modules are not accepted, even if they are sold as PC-only. You can't buy Fenix on the Marketplace, and you won't be able to buy the full GSX there as well (we'll have a reduced version, just for the Marketplace), and this doesn't help with reducing prices either.  Also, there's no way for developers to reliably check if you "own" a product on the Marketplace so, there's no way to offer things like upgrade prices, and there's no way to choose what to encrypt, resulting in actual limitations on the products capabilities.

- The realization that "just" making a scenery is not enough, you need to do be serious at optimization as well, and that can only mean increasing development costs. And the more time you take to add detail, the longer it takes to optimize it.

Also, how many LARGE airports have been made *entirely* from scratch for MSFS ? I'm not even sure if they are even feasible, also considering another issue: a proper airport made in the proper way needs lots of time to be done, even more than one year. And by the time you are halfway done, Microsoft might decide to offer the same airport "for free" in a World update, without much of an advance warning. The result is, nobody is really taking on huge international hubs, which ARE the things (airport-wise) that sell the most. Everybody seems to offer mid-size airports, which by definition sell less than big hubs, but since they DO require significant work anyway, the prices can't be very low.

Basically, there's a disconnection between what most users would like to pay and what is feasible and the projected sales.

You would like to pay 5$ for a regional airport, but such airport won't interest anybody except those living in *that* region so, selling at 5$ would result everybody in *that* region buying it, but those users won't be enough to cover development cost, if sold at that price. And if it sold for 15$, users would say it's too much for a regional airport.

On the other hand, something like KLAX or KJFK would surely interest lots of users worldwide but, the included versions are considered to be "good enough", and to make a proper version that would looks *dramatically* better than the default handcrafted one, it would require an incredible effort, and nobody has the required capitals to work 2 years on such an huge product, because right now they are all busy doing smaller airports, which have a shorter sales life span, so you need to start the next small airport, and the next one, and the next one.

[Keto Ketchup 240]

33 minutes ago, Keto Ketchup said:

My only concern is how these details will affect performance (still downloading the airport as I type this).

I just confirmed this is an issue. It's not a terrible drop in framerate, but it is noticeable. "Walking around" I see the developer of this airport got carried away, putting way more "stuff" than there needs to be (or even would be IRL).

So my question is - can 3rd party scenery be edited with the SDK, or is it locked up with DRM? Worse-case scenario, I could make my own add-on that's basically dozens of exclusion rectangles to remove the extra clutter, right? Though I don't know how well that would work - for example, can I remove half the cars from a parking lot without removing the pavement of that parking lot using an exclusion rectangle? Of course it would be much easier if I could just edit the scenery directly and tap DEL on all the extra fluff I don't need..

[tpete61 228]

19 hours ago, PilotPete99 said:

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but as time goes on, many of the new sceneries being released have slowly crept right back up to the P3D prices. I think many of us were convinced that this wasn’t going to be the case. I’m not complaining, and it’s each developer’s right to charge what they want. I am, however, a bit surprised by this. In P3D, it seemed to take far longer for airports to be developed. With MSFS, it is either much quicker, or there are just modifications being made to the P3D versions. Full disclosure, I’m no expert on software development, but I’m just curious as to where everyone else stands with regards to this. It also seems that many of the folks that once said they’d never pay P3D prices again, are now biting the bullet and doing so anyway. This is just speculation, but again I am a bit puzzled. I tend to buy stuff only on sale, but I’m curious as to what others think.

Cheers, Pete

None of the add on scenery is really needed.

A home Airport might be worthwhile but I rarely fly to the same airport very often so I find add on airports a complete waste of money.

Scenery add-ons are no different, they rarely enhance my experience.

[Bobsk8 12,750]

15 minutes ago, tpete61 said:

None of the add on scenery is really needed.

A home Airport might be worthwhile but I rarely fly to the same airport very often so I find add on airports a complete waste of money.

Scenery add-ons are no different, they rarely enhance my experience.

Same here. I almost never fly to the same airport twice. It would cost me thousands and thousands of dollars to purchase airports that I would land at maybe once. 

[Maxis 1,865]

I'm only slightly interested in my home airports KFLL and KMIA. Apart from those two i think the default airports are ok enough for me and the way i use the sim. As a previous poster said. I don't need to see what's on the table for lunch/dinner on the inside of these airports. A detailed exterior is enough for me as I'm shutting down the sim when I've reached the gates. 

What i am very inclined to purchase are items that will enhance or improve the overall sim environment.

Rex Accuseason (Purchased after thorough vetting) or whomever comes out the gate with a traffic program that's superior to AIG / and AES / GSX if it can be applied to most if not all airports.

Edited July 11, 2022 by Maxis

[darshonaut 237]

I don't buy scenery anymore. I have a couple but It wasn't worth it to me in the end. 

Lots is on flightsim.to for free and if I want a particular scenery that isn't available, I make it myself. I think I made easily more than a hundred bushstrips by now for MSFS.

I'm a bushpilot though, so I have no need for those huge international airports that other people usually spend money on.

The whole addon thing for me is a community freeware effort. I buy the occasional aircraft (if it's something special and affordable) but that's it.

 

 

 

Edited July 11, 2022 by darshonaut

[CFIJose 5,485]

Most simmers have been exhausted by buying airports for every sim upgrade that now they seek to get their thrills of freeware. I'm not one of those simmers. I look for 50% off deals and buy only what I feel is worth keeping. Having said that, I'll pay full price for a KTPA & KSPG today.

[Clutch Cargo 384]

I think the only airport I have bought for MSFS is FlyTampa's Las Vegas... AMAZING.  I think MSFS does a purty darn good job of creating scenery, cities, airports these days where that is not my main interest anymore. 

I lean towards add-ons that are unique or that I don't think MSFS will address in the near future.  Think of AIG (yes, I know it's freeware), but along those lines.  Of course it still needs to be top notch in my book.  I think if someone could put out a good ATC they would have a best seller.  So I look for those little gems.

I do plan to pick up a couple of aircraft like the PMDG 737-600 but who has time... ha!

[honanhal 1,420]

23 hours ago, PilotPete99 said:

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but as time goes on, many of the new sceneries being released have slowly crept right back up to the P3D prices. I think many of us were convinced that this wasn’t going to be the case. I’m not complaining, and it’s each developer’s right to charge what they want.

Well, I’ll complain. 🙂

Sure, developers can charge what they want, and I take on board Umberto’s points about how rational developers may have steadily raised prices in spite of the drawbacks. But I’ll also offer some “anecdotal data” from my own experience.

In the first few months of MSFS, I was happy to buy stuff I had frankly not that much interest in that came from a good developer, if was in the roughly $10 range (I’m thinking for example here of FSDT’s Key West). What a welcome change from P3D pricing that was! But those days are now long gone. To get anything at that price point, I have to look for sales, and fairly aggressive ones. I’ll only spend more than $15 on an airport if it’s either one I simply have to have or if it’s genuinely exceptional in quality (I’m talking top-10 available for the sim). There’s basically no “impulse shopping” at current prices, and that’s a change from the early days.

This works out mostly fine for me, but it really makes me wonder whether it’s an ideal place to be for developers — and, if not, what would have to change for the overall result to be better for both sides?

James

[PilotPete99 915]

@virtuali,

Thanks for such a thorough and thoughtful response Umberto!
 

Cheers, Pete

Edited July 12, 2022 by Ray Proudfoot
Very long quoted post removed

[Ricardo41 5,954]

Let's be honest, most payware airports are way overpriced for what you're getting. What you're getting is "more stuff" but I'm not seeing many innovative features that we haven't seen before. 

OK, you've managed to populate the terminal with zombie passengers and OMSI grandmas who shuffle back and forth like a herd of crazy zebras. 

And you've modeled the far out fire station in Area 567 - how impressive. 

[chapstick 2,758]

10 minutes ago, PilotPete99 said:

Thanks for such a thorough and thoughtful response Umberto!
 

Cheers, Pete

Yeah, thoroughly depressing lol

When the Marketplace was announced, I was worried MS/Asobo would spend most of their development efforts there because that's how they're going to sustain MSFS as a ten-year project. But the near opposite has happened and there are still so many issues with the Marketplace that as a customer I avoid it at all costs.