1 hour ago, pyreegue said:

Well I’ve seen plenty of people who want airports to cost 5-9$ and be that shovelware. I guess every product has its customer. I’m standing by my view on scenery, and Belfast Intl will be even crazier than anything I’ve made previously. 

I had mentioned to a friend (who is known for making scenery and airports) that MSFS had an excellent chance of "democratizing" the traditional ecosystem, as MSFS showed promise of being the first sim in years popular enough to draw in the talented gaming enthusiasts that would ordinarily be busy making scenery for first person shooters and things like Cities-Skylines.

I believe he disagreed, but sure enough, there has been a pretty much unprecedented flood of offerings (Thanks Flightsim.To!) into the market from previously unknown creators, much of it rivaling and even exceeding previous work by established publishers.

The second stage of this has been established publishers co-opting (with various levels of success) these new, mostly freeware creators, and offering them the opportunity to enter the pay-ware market. (hence, I believe, some of the relative drying up of the freeware market recently)

So the initial downward pricing pressure from the glut of outstanding freeware has eased a bit, which I suspect is also a factor in allowing prices to rise again. (amongst other factors brought up in this thread)

Its a theory.

1 hour ago, Steve_Ellis said:

If all your sceneries are like the ones you have already released, I will buy the whole lot...😀  They are outstanding.

Thank you for providing top notch quality sceneries.

Thank you very much, Steve! People like you are the ones I'm doing this for. 

I'd also like to comment on some previous posts, that development for MSFS is "easier" because many things are there "by default", like surrounding autogen, satellite etc. 

Development times for MSFS doubled, if not tripled, compared to previous sims. 

First factor - it's unpredictable. Sometimes things work, with the next update - they don't. 

Second factor - new graphics engine is a lot better than in any previous sims, and that means one thing - new models for new engine, otherwise they will spoil the look of the scenery with those edgy corners and blurry textures. 

Third factor - good amount of detail needs a good amount of LODs so that it's bearable by both PC and XBOX. And if you know anything about creating models, creating proper LODs takes almost the same amount of time as it took to create that model in the first place. 

I won't point fingers at developers (there are some big ones) who just converted their stuff from P3D into MSFS and priced scenery at half the price of another scenery which was created from scratch. But this is where all this "it was cheaper at the beginning" comes from.

Edited July 14, 20223 yr by pyreegue

48 minutes ago, pyreegue said:

Thank you very much, Steve! People like you are the ones I'm doing this for. 

I'd also like to comment on some previous posts, that development for MSFS is "easier" because many things are there "by default", like surrounding autogen, satellite etc. 

Development times for MSFS doubled, if not tripled, compared to previous sims. 

First factor - it's unpredictable. Sometimes things work, with the next update - they don't. 

Second factor - new graphics engine is a lot better than in any previous sims, and that means one thing - new models for new engine, otherwise they will spoil the look of the scenery with those edgy corners and blurry textures. 

Third factor - good amount of detail needs a good amount of LODs so that it's bearable by both PC and XBOX. And if you know anything about creating models, creating proper LODs takes almost the same amount of time as it took to create that model in the first place. 

I won't point fingers at developers (there are some big ones) who just converted their stuff from P3D into MSFS and priced scenery at half the price of another scenery which was created from scratch. But this is where all this "it was cheaper at the beginning" comes from.

Not to mention, as someone else stated the default airports are better than they ever have been. So if you plan on making an AP scenery, you'd better bring your "A" game. 

And like you said... plan on supporting it for the next 7 years as Asobo breaks it every 3 months with updates. If you don't you are going to get raked over the coals like Orbx is in another thread. 

Edited July 14, 20223 yr by snwboardn

1 hour ago, pyreegue said:

Thank you very much, Steve! People like you are the ones I'm doing this for. 

I'd also like to comment on some previous posts, that development for MSFS is "easier" because many things are there "by default", like surrounding autogen, satellite etc. 

Development times for MSFS doubled, if not tripled, compared to previous sims. 

First factor - it's unpredictable. Sometimes things work, with the next update - they don't. 

Second factor - new graphics engine is a lot better than in any previous sims, and that means one thing - new models for new engine, otherwise they will spoil the look of the scenery with those edgy corners and blurry textures. 

Third factor - good amount of detail needs a good amount of LODs so that it's bearable by both PC and XBOX. And if you know anything about creating models, creating proper LODs takes almost the same amount of time as it took to create that model in the first place. 

I won't point fingers at developers (there are some big ones) who just converted their stuff from P3D into MSFS and priced scenery at half the price of another scenery which was created from scratch. But this is where all this "it was cheaper at the beginning" comes from.

You are very welcome, I always like to give credit and praise for quality sceneries and addons.

BTW, if you EVER feel you want to do Norwich feel free ( tounge in cheek ) 🤐

Thank you for also enlightening me about the development times, it was said many moons ago that scenery making was easier in MSFS but obviously not and with constant changes in code by asobo you must have your work cut out for you.

I wish I had the time to invest in scenery development but I like flying too much 🤣

There are some great sceneries out now for MSFS including EBBR, Fly Tampa and Flightbeam offerings and it can only get better, and UK airports are almost guaranteed reasonable sales due to the amount of simmers here and popular destinations.

Look forward to your Belfast 😉

20 hours ago, pyreegue said:

Third factor - good amount of detail needs a good amount of LODs so that it's bearable by both PC and XBOX. And if you know anything about creating models, creating proper LODs takes almost the same amount of time as it took to create that model in the first place. 

I won't point fingers at developers (there are some big ones) who just converted their stuff from P3D into MSFS and priced scenery at half the price of another scenery which was created from scratch. But this is where all this "it was cheaper at the beginning" comes from.

Sometimes it's the PERCEPTION that counts.

We released KCLT for MSFS, which *was* a "conversion" from P3D but, since Asobo during that time announced that products without LOD would eventually start to have their objects automatically culled, we spent literally MONTHS to add multiple ( up to 9 ) LOD levels to each and every object which, as you said "takes almost the same amount of time as it took to create that model in the first place", and that without even starting to take into account the time to *manually* convert all textures to PBR, the "afcad" completely remade from the ground up, hundreds of taxiway signs completely remade because with the sloped scenery we couldn't use the existing ones. And yes, a whole new terminal, all made from scratch complete with interiors, which simply didn't exist in the P3D version.

So, can this still be called a "conversion" ?

Edited July 15, 20223 yr by virtuali

On 7/14/2022 at 8:29 AM, HiFlyer said:

So the initial downward pricing pressure from the glut of outstanding freeware has eased a bit, which I suspect is also a factor in allowing prices to rise again. (amongst other factors brought up in this thread)

Its a theory.

I'm sure that is true for some freeware developers, but I think another big reason is because Asobo kept changing the SDK (often things that had no purpose or reason to be changed), creating additional work. It's one thing to lose hours when getting paid (still bad), but it's quite another when working for free.

I cannot tell you how many times I loaded my airport and was like, oh please not again.

 

On 7/15/2022 at 2:58 PM, virtuali said:

Sometimes it's the PERCEPTION that counts.

We released KCLT for MSFS, which *was* a "conversion" from P3D but, since Asobo during that time announced that products without LOD would eventually start to have their objects automatically culled, we spent literally MONTHS to add multiple ( up to 9 ) LOD levels to each and every object which, as you said "takes almost the same amount of time as it took to create that model in the first place", and that without even starting to take into account the time to *manually* convert all textures to PBR, the "afcad" completely remade from the ground up, hundreds of taxiway signs completely remade because with the sloped scenery we couldn't use the existing ones. And yes, a whole new terminal, all made from scratch complete with interiors, which simply didn't exist in the P3D version.

So, can this still be called a "conversion" ?

Not really. What you do is remarkable. A simple conversion means plug it into a software that converts your o/r/m maps, objs to gltfs and call it a day. 

On 7/15/2022 at 7:58 AM, virtuali said:

since Asobo during that time announced that products without LOD would eventually start to have their objects automatically culled,

From the store or by the sim itself? In other words, if I make my own hometown airport for myself, will it work fine if I just use single texture assets without LOD, or will it visually disappear at a distance? I'm not worried so much about geometry, as the buildings at my airport are pretty simple and wouldn't really need LOD reduction. I'm not one to model every windowsill and door trim, I just let the textures create that illusion at a distance. I'm not looking to sell my little airport for money, I just want it to look right from the air and taxiway.