1 hour ago, rka said:

While it makes sense business wise, it means there will not any competition in the consumer market which is sad.

Stupid question, WHY???? Where is there the " no competition",

44 minutes ago, mjrhealth said:

Stupid question, WHY???? Where is there the " no competition",

Because Austin is not trying to compete on the consumer market, but targeting the professional market.

While it's possible that some features that might come also will be good for consumers, it's by no means guaranteed because they're not made with consumers in mind, but with professionals in mind which may and likely will have different aims with the product. 

It's quite likely that an airline will not find ground scenery and autogen as important as consumers for example.

1 hour ago, rka said:

Because Austin is not trying to compete on the consumer market, but targeting the professional market.

While it's possible that some features that might come also will be good for consumers, it's by no means guaranteed because they're not made with consumers in mind, but with professionals in mind which may and likely will have different aims with the product. 

It's quite likely that an airline will not find ground scenery and autogen as important as consumers for example.

What makes you say hes targeting the professional market. XPLANE offers something for all, everyone from the beginner to the PRO who wants best flight dynamics etc. Considering the number of new people who seem to have come across from MS to XPLANE, Get new ones every week. Considering xplane is usable on your smart phone, i doubt the pro industry would be interested in that. But yes i know, you want the leaves to fall off the trees, whales and fish leaping from the water, butterflies and bees floating and buzzing around, cricket sounds and birds. So many annoyed because they never got what they think a flight sim should be. Its all about flying. And when you fly at night or in thick clouds, doesnt really matter what the scenery looks like, long as you can see the lights in the dark.

Of course they are targeting the every man consumer market and they've been doing that increasingly over the years. If that wasn't the case, they wouldn't suddenly put so many resources into UI, 'immersion' visuals, worry about uncanny valley presentation, visual seasons and work off a list with community requested features. Them diverging from competing that he talked about is simply because X-Plane can't compete at that visual level against MSFS in many ways, with a developer that has so many resources (Even though they are doing an excellent job). So their focus is instead on improving the X-Plane 'niche' and perfecting their offline environment. 

Austin was very clear from the get go when Microsoft Flight Simulator popped into the interview at the outset. Flight Simulator and X-Plane used to leap frog each other in popularity as each new platform version was released. Now, without X-Plane exploring new scenery technologies these two platforms have diverged. Numbers tell the story. This video stream was on the official X-Plane YouTube channel with over 51K subscribers (11 years of existence) - only 100-200 viewers listening when I was watching. X-Plane continues to develop the flight modeling geared towards the most accurate flight dynamics that lends itself to professional certification- a small niche market on the home computer. 
The Microsoft Flight Simulator channel with 121K subscribers (started 3 years ago) draws viewers in the thousands when streaming live interviews. The vast majority of users on the home computer want to be immersed in scenery visuals and fly anywhere in the world. The trends and evolving market shares are clear.

I started listening to it late and was able to mute/speed up most of the garbage. The seaplane clip was fun to watch.

The pro market is a badge of honor and a fantastic marketing tag line for us commoners. Those two market segments are as synergistic as it gets. 

Also, don't forget that the desktop version is Austin's hobby at this point. Not only does he have enough money in the bank to comfortably retire and keep repairing his Lancair and Ferrari, but Mobile is what's really paying for all our habits! DLC for the win!

Yeah ... the ever same ruminant "argument": sales figures / YT channel subscribers = success. According to this, my local gourmet restaurant has failed miserably, because they don't sell as many menus as the local McDonalds store.

There seem to be still sufficient people who don't orientate themselves to sales figures, but to quality.

1 minute ago, flying_carpet said:

Yeah ... the ever same ruminant "argument": sales figures / YT channel subscribers = success. According to this, my local gourmet restaurant has failed miserably, because they don't sell as many menus as the local McDonalds store.

There seem to be still sufficient people who don't orientate themselves to sales figures, but to quality.

That.... sounded defensive and a bit whistling-in-the-darky...

I'm almost certain to end up purchasing XP12... but mostly for completeness sake (I have all-the-sims) and messing around when bored / craving a bit of variety.

I don't imagine investing any resources into purchasing additional assets for it though, so the decision of Orbx to display themselves prominently here was both interesting and a bit..... irrelevant. (for me)

There is no absolute correlation between high numbers and success and quality, especially on YouTube! There are small channels with relatively few subscribers that put out the highest quality content possible. There are other channels with crazy subscriber numbers that deliver content of the poorest quality. A great measure of success is when your peers acknowledge advances in your field - the scenery aspect of Flight Simulator that Austin described is case in point. Quality can be measured in several ways, especially aside from numbers. All sim platforms have aspects of the highest quality and specific features dictate to what is popular and the masses in this hobby.

4 hours ago, mjrhealth said:

What makes you say hes targeting the professional market.

Austin Meyer said so in last night's video. I am quoting him. That makes me say he is targeting the pro market.

Reading this and some of the following comments: Has any of the cultists actually listened to what the guy said yesterday? Good lord.

Edited July 17, 20223 yr by rka

Targetting the pro market (to the extent of not licensing the product for consumer use) didn't prevent P3D being a consumer product so it's not easy to know what effect LR targeting X-Plane at a Professional market would actually have.

It's a question-mark over future plans certainly but one that requires proper clarification.

Justin Bieber channel has 30x subscribers compared to Led Zeppelin channel, but I don't think that says anything about their respective music quality? 🤷

Edited July 17, 20223 yr by Murmur

I can't watch it because I find him so intolerably irritating but did he announce the price of XP12? 

Edited July 17, 20223 yr by jarmstro

31 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

I can't watch it because I find him so intolerably irritating but did he announce the price of XP12? 

That was announced months ago;

Blog - X-Plane Developer

"X-Plane 12 will be available for purchase as a digital key for $59.99, just like always."

1 minute ago, Sethos said:

That was announced months ago;

Blog - X-Plane Developer

"X-Plane 12 will be available for purchase as a digital key for $59.99, just like always."

Ah,