On 10/17/2022 at 6:56 AM, jorgensandersen said:

I do not - definitely not - want to converse about fictional vaporware or rumors, which is what such a conversation would be. It would be pointless speculation, burning up gazillions of electrons in the process. Again, no one knows anything - anything at all. That is a hard FACT - that v. 6 "is coming" is not, and you know it.

Jorgen

Yet you remain engaged in this very speculative thread. Emperor, where are your clothes?

-B

Sounds like aerosoft is 100pct out on v6 involvement at least at this time. There is a post on their forums somewhere. Read the statement on discord. 

Here’s the quote from the aerosoft forum. Paraphrasing, they “may” provide tweaks if necessary but will not spend serious time to make their products compatible.  We won’t see any new development from aerosoft for P3d v6 which we kind of already knew.

 

We have no plans to do very serious work on updating our products (how external development teams think about that could be different). If there are tweaks needed we might provide those.  We are not involved in the beta as far as I know.

    The simply fact is that anything we do on P3D at this moment is money spend without a chance of it ever getting paid for by new sales. There are a large group of P3D users (just like there are many FSX users) but they do not invest in their hobby. So commercially these products are dead and it is very hard for a commercial company like Aerosoft to invest in that.  This is not what we would prefer, we love flight simulators and the more platforms the better.

    But fact is that MSFS and X-Plane are the two only viable platforms to make commercial products for.  Sorry.
 
 

Edited October 19, 20223 yr by okupton

Yes, but Mr. Kok has many times in the past demonstrated antipathy for P3d. I wouldn't expect that to change.

 

There are still a lot of speculation about a P3D6.

Facts:

* P3D6 would need to be far better than msfs to see people switching back to P3D. A lot of people already have invested a lot in msfs. Developpers are heavily developping into msfs with many new and interresting projects to arrive in 2023 so it wouldn't be easy to switch back to something which was not really attractive in term of development during the last few months. Even if P3D close the gap with msfs, why would you come back? I mean, a new user investing in the hobby could hesitate between P3D6 or msfs but why someone would switch back if the other sim is quite equal and not better or nicer? P3D really need to bring a giant WOW effect just like when msfs was launched to invert the downfall.

* If P3D6 is way better than msfs and bring that wow effect, there is a great chance that this would be a complete revamp and the big risk is to see a lack of compatibility with the existing add-ons. How big will the changes? Even if 6.0 is a great success with developpers coming back, it could take months to see developpers updating their add-ons and it will probably not be free of charge. Some of those add-ons would have to be rewritten completely. It took PMDG more than 2 years to bring something to msfs.  Now if LM can come on par with msfs, bringing the WOW effect, and keep the compatibility with 5.0, kuddo to them. Even Asobo wasn't able to do it.

* If P3D6 don't come on par with msfs and doesn't bring the wow effect, it's disastrous. Like any new iteration of P3D, we all know it will require slight updates from the developpers to make those add-ons compatible with 6.0. Aerosoft won't make the effort, they probably won't be the only one in that case. As difficult it could be for us, it makes business sense. Most people would expect those update for free and it won't bring new sales. Some others developpers are not in the business anymore and we won't see updates anyway. It could mean that a lot of add-ons available on 5.0 won't work with 6.0. Most users in that case, could chose to stick with 5.0.

In fact, if 6.0 is only a slight improvment from 5.0, I fear at best it can slow down the number of users switching to msfs or XP12 but it won't bring users back.

To conclude, P3D still has a strong base of hardcore fans. Those loyal users won't switch to msfs of XP12 anytime soon. But it's not enough for P3d6.0 to be a success. It requires to catch back a lot of users who left the nest during the last two years. Only if a lot of users come back to P3D, then publishers and developpers will come back to the P3D market to revitalize it. Is it impossible or too late? Maybe not, but for sure LM will need to come with something really impressive, even more impressive that what ASOBO brought to the table in late 2019. But considering that LM is more involved in the professional market in which those wow effects are not the priority target, it would require from them the desire to really conquer the hobby market, so a complete change of strategy.

That is mostly - if not all - speculation, not fact.

In my opinion, V6 wouldn't have to be as pretty as MSFS to catch up with it overall, it has other advantages.

Can't say anything.. but the corrected link posted later was legit.. I will leave it at that and will ignore any questions asked on this.. 

Edited October 19, 20223 yr by simbol

My choice of simulator is primarily driven by the aircraft I want to fly. I must be the only person in the world still using P3Dv3 because I can fly a highly accurate Concorde. There is a 64-bit version coming to P3D so I will remain with that sim until FSL offer a version in an alternative sim.

There are other reasons I prefer P3D. Access to the weather SDK allowing third-parties to create a program that permits historical weather. And I can stay with an older version of the sim if I prefer.

I know I’ve banged this particular drum on numerous occasions but that’s because I feel strongly enough about these features. They are my red lines.

Who knows what v6 will bring. How restricted are LM by the agreement with Microsoft? Is it time restricted? I really hope they can improve it significantly. Time will tell.

It has been exactly 9 months ago that the last hotfix was released for P3D 5.3. Never in the history of P3D has there been such a long period of silence, which opens up the question how much LM has been able to improve the sim for v6. Maybe LM knows that they need to bring something big to the table as far as graphics is concerned to be competitive with the other sims. Even if the improvement is significant, it may not necessarily bring back most of those who went to MSFS, but it will attract serious simmers. I doubt that LM will make major changes on the aerodynamics/aircraft front in order to maintain backwards compatibility with older airplanes, which will allow PMDG & co to easily upgrade their airplanes.

4 hours ago, sdirand said:

If P3D6 don't come on par with msfs and doesn't bring the wow effect, it's disastrous.

There are two markets and two massive competing elements at play with P3D.

Commercial vs. home-use/academic, in which the commercial customers are worth more to LM.
Incremental change and backward compatibility vs. wholesale change, in which backward compatibility has always been the ethos of the P3D line.

Wholesale change requires a return on investment that may not be possible for LM to achieve. A revolutionary v6 is likely to require far more customers than LM has to justify the significant expense of overhauling the platform to make a worthwhile profit from that investment decision.

The only way it's disastrous for P3D in the medium term is if MS is permitted by the terms of their licencing agreement to go after commercial customers. If that's the case, then marketing material like the below just won't cut it.

https://youtu.be/Jz6KE8dflBc?t=46

On 10/17/2022 at 6:31 AM, jorgensandersen said:

How do you know that this is a fact? ... <edited>

Jorgen

See Simbol's post where he said:

"Can't say anything.. but the corrected link posted later was legit.. I will leave it at that and will ignore any questions asked on this.. "

So how about an admission you were wrong?

Edited October 19, 20223 yr by pgde

Politics creeping into the thread OH, Inflation is a myth.   

4 minutes ago, G-RFRY said:

Politics creeping into the thread OH, Inflation is a myth.   

Good point - just edited the quote to remove any politics.

P3D can be quite frustrating and it takes quite a bit of knowledge and effort to get it working optimally, but for myself it is worth the effort. The level of realism of the more complex addons is stunning and if you get things set up right you get decent frames and smoothness. Whenever I see others flying MSFS on stream it just looks too cartoonish, especially on the ground, and the lack of sophistication in some areas still leaves it well behind P3D. I have too much time and money invested in P3D to switch to a streaming service that MS could pull the plug on at any minute. I expect v6 to be an evolution, probably something that I can avoid unless it really adds a wow factor. I fully expect P3D to be around well after MS have pulled the plug again.

I guess, that LM doesn´t plan to catch up with MSFS in general, because most "features" in MSFS are driven form a gamers perspective and this is just not the Market they focus. LM uses the entertainment sector to participate on the motivation of add-on developers to create improvements for the Simulator base. One major reason for LM to take over the Simulator base from MS was the growing segment of modern warfare by remote controled drones and other aircrafts and to train the pilots for this invironment. Surprisingly it wasn´t LM´s idea to use Satelite images combined with photgrammetry to cover the operation regions how they are in real. But i´am sure they would be the firsts being interrested in that kind of technology from a  strategic and military perspective. For the base training they don´t need eyecandy like HDR, Enhanced Athmosphere and all this stuff. But for sure they would love to use a scenery like in MSFS to prepare Dronepilots for future mission scenarios.

I wouldn´t be surprised if LM takes over the graphic engine onf MSFS instead of trying to catch up with P3D. The major issue with MSFS actually is still the lack of being a Flightsimulator, rather then beeing an Aircraftsimulator. From a poffessional commercial Pilots point of view MSFS is still far away from beeing a serious Simulatorplattform. That is the point where X-Plane and P3D are still serious competitiors.