8 minutes ago, mSparks said:

why not all?

iirc xp11 was sub 100 steam users per day for the first few months.

developer engagement, reception, sales, user interest, services etc all significantly greater than 5 years ago, for obvious reasons.

where is this?

Just below the MCDU screenshots

https://fselite.net/content/x-plane-12-launching-in-full-come-december/

 

Quoted the wrong part, for the Open XR support meant to be

Edited November 6, 20223 yr by Steve_Ellis

3 hours ago, BobFS88 said:

Your absolutely right but have we seen the presentation? 

Bullet point does not say much when they are verbally given out facts and figure provided they did exactly that.  If someone can point us to a link that we can watch than we will get some question answer and then we will know.

 

That is exactly my point, when people want to look at the numbers from the Steam website  and say "well X plane 12 isn't doing all that well with just 400+ users and are less than X plane 11 compared to the other sim with "no context (sales figures for LR or sales figures from Aerosoft and any other outlet that sales X plane 12) and without consideration of user apathy because it's in beta, there are some would believe what they see and run with it, without caution.

Two can play that game, if LR feel confident to say that they are doing well then I say go for it. 

Yes my point is exactly this. We simply don’t know yet. Naturally XP 12 will do better than XP 11, interest in flight sims is probably the highest it’s been in decades. Beyond that, only laminar knows what’s up. 
 

as always, the truth is somewhere in the middle of “XP is dead” to “XP 12 is the best thing since sliced bread”. 
 

My personal opinion is that XP 12 is doing OK, but laminar is feeling the competitive pressure and are doing their best to improve the product fast. Which is good! Competition makes it better for us. We SHOULD have two strong platforms, with different philosophies. Something like Mac OS v Win11

Laminar have been putting out weekly sim updates since the launch of early access. That in itself is quite impressive and honestly I have seen an overall improvement in visual fidelity and performance. Let's assume that they decide to launch the full build in the last week of December, that gives you atleast 6 more sim updates before the launch. I do believe we will have a much better version 12 in December.

Reading that fselite article, one thing in particular caught my eye. They are actively looking to expand their team and are looking for scenery Devs and marketing gurus. Now I would love to hear more on this. I wish the presentation was available to watch somewhere.

11 minutes ago, Baber20 said:

They are actively looking to expand their team and are looking for scenery Devs and marketing gurus.

If only IBM did this back in the 90's we maybe be running on their system instead of Windows

The marketing part is key I think.

Edited November 6, 20223 yr by BobFS88

"...most successful launch ever..." is really great news.

While I agree with a bit of devil's advocating regarding "marketing", it's far from the doom and gloom many feared, especially having to endure the outright mockery coming even from within the v11 ranks!

By comparison, all evidence shows P3D v5, which was/is actually a great improvement over v4, did not fare nearly as well at release, nor since (sadly).

In sum, I'm enjoying vanilla v12 far more than I enjoyed vanilla v11 in every respect. The glitches are inevitable at this early stage, especially given the major re-coding that had to happen, and they are rapidly improving.

The 3rd Party Devs are releasing updates/upgrades at a furious pace, and even so, the default addons are quite good enough on their own.

All the same, I understand Austin's position, but it's still difficult to believe that investing in some general upgrades to ground textures wouldn't pay great dividends. I mean, heck, I installed SFD's 3-year-old Global and even that is a substantial improvement!

I think Austin knows he can never compete for the millions of gamers out there on Xbox and PC who are addicted to real to life graphics. But the sim remained a niche for his die hard followers. He has the means to keep costs to barebone minimums with a small Dev team working from home. None of the usual costs to pay for an office, Dev tools, hardware, QA Testers, etc etc. Then he also does some side projects too, which earns something. So I think XP will survive for the medium term (at least).

Edited November 6, 20223 yr by Greazer

9 hours ago, BobFS88 said:

If only IBM did this back in the 90's we maybe be running on their system instead of Windows

I was an official BETA tester for OS2 and had to upgrade my RAM from 4MB to 8MB to run it, at a cost of £145!

Anyway Windows was never going to be beaten because OS2 had negligible multi-media and other gizmos the public was just starting to want, as CDROMs were starting to come out such as MicroSoft's encyclopaedia etc.

Despite Woolworth's using it and a couple of other big corporates, the sheer usability of Windows beat OS2 in very short order.

Being the cynic that I am, I think this is a ploy to get folks like me who haven't invested in the early versions to pony up the money now and buy the alpha/beta version.  Then once they make all this money during November, they can delay the final version until mid 2023.  Yes I am being a bit cynical, but who knows what their real plans are.

11 hours ago, Fizzelle said:

the sheer usability of Windows beat OS2 in very short order.

The sheer usability of Windows is because it came preloaded on their systems and where given no choice. If the same effort was given for OS2 by the industry it would been just a useful but more reliable.   

But I not going continue to debate this which is out of scope. 

My point I was making was that IBM gave up the fight in not hiring competent marketers who know how to aggressively market the OS as was Microsoft was doing at the time, That is in contrast to what Austin is doing by hiring marketers to help promote X Plane which in my book a big plus.

Edited November 6, 20223 yr by BobFS88

13 hours ago, Greazer said:

I think Austin knows he can never compete for the millions of gamers out there on Xbox and PC who are addicted to real to life graphics

I have used MSFS since release, but have more or less moved over to XP12.  The reason is the ortho available is better quality than in MSFS.  Add to that SimHeaven X-World, Global Forests V2 and the fantastic new lighting model to give more convincing real to life graphics imho.

Problem is, MSFS has it all as default plus prettier clouds so no research or additional purchases required.  I don't suppose that many people will get past the initial few minutes of seeing the default scenery is not up to the standards of MSFS.

22 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

I have used MSFS since release, but have more or less moved over to XP12.  The reason is the ortho available is better quality than in MSFS.  Add to that SimHeaven X-World, Global Forests V2 and the fantastic new lighting model to give more convincing real to life graphics imho.

Problem is, MSFS has it all as default plus prettier clouds so no research or additional purchases required.  I don't suppose that many people will get past the initial few minutes of seeing the default scenery is not up to the standards of MSFS.

Problem is, MSFS has it all as default plus prettier clouds so no research or additional purchases required.  I don't suppose that many people will get past the initial few minutes of seeing the default scenery is not up to the standards of MSFS.

This is where I am. I'm just getting too long in the tooth to keep messing with addon after addon, adding/subracting lines from config files, painful deletion of plugins to find which one is scuppering the sim.... the list goes on.

Had it with FSX, P3D, previous XP releases. Enough is enough. Im struggling with stutters in XP12 and I'm hanging my hat up until the proper release.

If it still stutters then, it's consigned to my backup HDD graveyard or deleted.

 

 

 

44 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

I have used MSFS since release, but have more or less moved over to XP12.  The reason is the ortho available is better quality than in MSFS.  Add to that SimHeaven X-World, Global Forests V2 and the fantastic new lighting model to give more convincing real to life graphics imho.

This is puzzling, the strongest point of the other sim is exactly those things you mentioned above.
Ortho does not come with XP12, you need to generate it yourself via a tool that is not yet fully compatible, X-World is great for a one-man project but the autogen is very basic. Global Forest V2 is not free.

XP historically excels in other things

33 minutes ago, peroni said:

Ortho does not come with XP12

His point is, aiui most people do not look that deep, and I'm not sure exactly how much LR can advertise the fact that there is still Ortho - and better, more reliable quality, for free, the change of use stuff is something of a grey area legally (not wrong afaict, but that never stopped lawyers before), 

2 hours ago, peroni said:

This is puzzling, the strongest point of the other sim is exactly those things you mentioned above.
Ortho does not come with XP12, you need to generate it yourself via a tool that is not yet fully compatible, X-World is great for a one-man project but the autogen is very basic. Global Forest V2 is not free.

XP historically excels in other things

mSparks is correct - many, if not most, people are not going to get past initial impressions 'out the box'. they will not know better quality ortho than in MSFS is available with a bit of effort. They may not use XP12 long enough to see the experience as a whole is worth early version clouds / autogen.

IMHO the new XP12 lighting model is better than MSFS.  Also I find the trees in XP12 / Global forests to be more realistic too.  Global forest may not be free, but I am not in the camp that everything in this world should be free, especially a great product like Global Forests at such a cheap price.  I have made two donations to the developer of X-world, one for each product downloaded.

 

3 hours ago, Bunchy said:

This is where I am. I'm just getting too long in the tooth to keep messing with addon after addon, adding/subracting lines from config files

I don't mess with the scenery.cfg file either, I use xOrganiser.

3 hours ago, Bunchy said:

painful deletion of plugins to find which one is scuppering the sim

One of the complaints with MSFS is the community folder at update time!